Marwan Ii

Related Category: Middle Eastern History: Biographies

(mär´wän), 684–750, last of the Umayyad caliphs. He served as governor of Armenia before his short-lived rule as caliph (744–50). Marwan reorganized his army, taking Syria by 746. Soon afterward, the Umayyad army was defeated (750) by a combined force of Iraqi, Persian, Shiite, and Abbasid soldiers. Marwan fled, only to be killed by troops under the first caliph of the subsequent Abbasids.