Abd al-Rahman I

Abd al-Rahman I, more fully Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya ibn Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (731–788), was the founder of a Muslim dynasty that ruled the greater part of Iberia for nearly three centuries (including the succeeding Caliphate of Córdoba). At the time it was known by the Arabs as al-Andalus. Abd al-Rahman's establishment of a government in al-Andalus represented a branching from the rest of the Caliphate of Damascus, which had been brought under the Abbasid following the overthrow of the Umayyad dynasty from Damascus in 750.

He was also known by the surnames al-Dakhil ("the Entrant"), Saqr Quraish ("the Falcon of the Quraysh") and the "Falcon of Andalus". Variations of the spelling of his name include Abd ar-Rahman I, Abdul Rahman I, Abdar Rahman I, and Abderraman I.

Biography

Flight from Damascus

Born near Damascus in Syria, Abd al-Rahman was the son of the Umayyad prince Mu'awiya ibn Hisham and a Berber mother, and thus the grandson of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, caliph from 724 to 743. He was twenty when his family, the ruling Umayyads, were overthrown by the Abbasid Revolution in 748–750. Abd al-Rahman and a small part of his family fled Damascus, where the center of Umayyad power had been; people moving with him include his brother Yahya, his four-year-old son Sulayman, and some of his sisters, as well as his Greek freedman, Bedr. The family fled from Damascus to the River Euphrates. All along the way the path was filled with danger, as the Abbasids had dispatched horsemen across the region to try to find the Umayyad prince and kill him. The Abbasids were merciless with all Umayyads that they found. Abbasid agents closed in on Abd al-Rahman and his family while they were hiding in a small village. He left his young son with his sisters and fled with Yahya. Accounts vary, but Bedr likely initially escaped with Abd ar-Rahman. Some histories indicate that Bedr met up with Abd al-Rahman at a later date.

Abd al-Rahman

Abd al-Rahman or Abd ar-Rahman (Arabic: عبد الرحمن‎ or occasionally عبد الرحمان; DMG ʿAbd ar-Raḥman) is a male Muslim given name, and in modern usage, surname. It is built from the Arabic words Abd, al- and Rahman. The name means "servant of the most merciful", ar-Rahman being one of the names of God in the Qur'an, which give rise to the Muslim theophoric names.

The letter A of the al- is unstressed, and can be transliterated by almost any vowel, often by u. Because the letter R is a sun letter, the letter l of the al- is assimilated to it. Thus although the name is written in Arabic with letters corresponding to Abd al-Rahman, the usual pronunciation corresponds to Abd ar-Rahman. Alternative transliterations include ‘Abd ar-Rahman, Abdul Rahman, Abdur Rahman, Abdur Rehman, Abdul Rehman, Abidur Rahman, and others, all subject to variant spacing and hyphenation. Certain transliterations tend to be associated with certain areas, for example, Abdirahman in Somalia, and Abderrahmane in French-speaking North Africa.