The name given to the Levant by the Arab conquerors was Aš-Šām. The population of the region did not become predominantly Muslim and Arab in identity until nearly a millennium after the conquest. Following the Muslim conquest, Muawiyah ibn Abu Sufyan of the Banu Umayyah governed the Syrian region for twenty years, and developed the province as his family's power base. Relying on Syrian military support, Muawiyah emerged as the victor in the First Fitna and established the Umayyad Caliphate. During Umayyad times, al-Sham was divided into five junds or military districts. The initial districts were Jund al-Urdunn, Jund Dimashq, Jund Ḥimṣ, Jund Filasṭīn, and later, Jund Qinnasrîn was carved out of part of Jund Hims. Under the Umayyads, the city ofDamascus was the capital of the Islamic Caliphate and Syria formed the Caliphate's "metropolitan" province; likewise, the elite Syrian army, the Ahl ash-Shâm, formed the main pillar of the Umayyad regime. Syria became much less important under the Abbasid Caliphate, which succeeded the Umayyads in 750. The Abbasids moved the capital first to Kufa, and then to Baghdad and Samarra, all of which were in Iraq, which consequently became their most important province. The mainly Arab Syrians were marginalized by Iranian and Turkish forces who rose to power under the Abbasids, a trend which also expressed itself on a cultural level. Under Harun al-Rashid. The northern parts of the province were detached to form a new jund, called al-ʿAwāṣim, which served as a second line of defence against Byzantine attacks, behind the actual frontier zone of the Thughur. From 878 until 905, Syria came under the effective control of the Tulunids of Egypt, but Abbasid control was re-established soon thereafter. It lasted until the 940s, when the province was partitioned between the HamdanidEmirate of Aleppo in the north and Ikhshidid-controlled Egypt in the south. In the 960s the Byzantine Empire under Nikephoros II Phokas conquered much of northern Syria, and Aleppo became a Byzantine tributary, while the southern provinces passed to the Fatimid Caliphate after its conquest of Egypt in 969. The division of Syria into northern and southern parts would persist, despite political changes, until the Mamluk conquest in the late 13th century.
