He was now the caliph—the first ruler of a dynasty that history has come to call the Umayyads, after his (and before him, Uthman’s) clan, the Banu Umayya. With Muawiya’s rise from leader of Islamic Syria to become commander of all the Muslim faithful, the age of the Rightly Guided caliphs came to an end, and the Umayyad period began.
