The Umayyad caliph who salvaged the dynasty during the Second Fitna, founding the Marwanid line that would rule for another sixty years.
Life
Marwan I (reigned 684–685), an elder statesman of the Umayyad house, took the caliphate amid the chaos of the Second Fitna when Umayyad rule was collapsing before the rival Ibn al-Zubayr. In a short reign he rallied Umayyad loyalists, secured Syria and Egypt, and re-established the dynasty under his branch — the Marwanids — whose members, beginning with his son Abd al-Malik, would rule the caliphate for another sixty years.