20 Facts About Yazid II

Yazid II was designated by his half-brother, Caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik, as second-in-line to the succession after their cousin Umar, as a compromise with the sons of Abd al-Malik.

Yazid II reversed the reformist policies of Umar, mainly by reimposing the jizya on the and resuming the war efforts on the frontiers of the Caliphate, especially against the Khazars in the Caucasus and the Byzantines in Anatolia.

Yazid II issued an iconoclastic edict whereby Christian icons were destroyed in churches across the caliphate, influencing the Byzantine emperor Leo III to institute a similar edict in his domains.

Yazid II did not possess military or administrative experience before his reign.

Yazid II rarely left Syria except for a number of visits to the Hejaz, including once for the annual Hajj pilgrimage sometime between 715 and 717.

Yazid II was possibly granted control of the region around Amman by Abd al-Malik.

Yazid II built the desert palaces of al-Qastal and al-Muwaqqar, both in the general vicinity of Amman.

The palaces are conventionally dated to his caliphate, though a number of archaeologists suggest Yazid II began their construction before 720.

Yazid II married al-Hajjaj's niece, Umm al-Hajjaj, the daughter of Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Thaqafi.

Yazid II was married to Su'da bint Abd Allah ibn Amr, a great-granddaughter of Caliph Uthman, who mothered Yazid II's son and daughter Abd Allah and A'isha.

Yazid II had taken two singers Sallama al-Qass and Habbaba as concubines.

Yazid II was chosen by his half-brother Caliph Sulayman as the second-in-line in the caliphal succession after their first cousin, Umar, who ruled from 717 to 720.

Yazid II had long-held suspicions, nurtured by al-Hajjaj, of Ibn al-Muhallab's and the Muhallabid family's influence and ambitions in Iraq and the eastern Caliphate.

Yazid II ordered the executions of the roughly two hundred prisoners-of-war captured from Ibn al-Muhallab's camp, while Ibn al-Muhallab's son Mu'awiya ordered the execution of Ibn Artat and his thirty supporters incarcerated in Wasit.

Unlike the era of al-Hajjaj Yazid II applied this principle for the first time to Ifriqiya, Khurasan, Sind and the Iberian Peninsula.

The Berbers reinstalled Ibn Abi Muslim's predecessor Ismail ibn Abd Allah ibn Abi al-Muhajir and notified Yazid II, who approved the change.

Syriac sources further note that Yazid II entrusted Maslama to execute the order and that the mandate influenced the Byzantine emperor Leo III to enact his own iconoclastic policy for the Byzantine Empire.

Yazid II died of consumption in Irbid, a town in the Balqa subdistrict of Jund Dimashq on 24 Sha'ban 105 AH.

Yazid II had intended to appoint al-Walid as his immediate successor but was persuaded by Maslama to appoint Hisham instead, followed by al-Walid.

Blankinship considers the portrayal of Yazid II as being heavily influenced by Hababa to be "much exaggerated", though he likely patronized poets and had a "refined artistic taste".