Al-Walid I — The Umayyad zenith
705–715 CE · The Umayyad Caliphate
Under al-Walid I the caliphate reaches its greatest breadth: Tariq ibn Ziyad crosses into Iberia (711), Muhammad ibn Qasim reaches Sind, and Qutayba ibn Muslim takes Bukhara and Samarkand — one state from the Atlantic to the Indus. At home he builds the Great Mosque of Damascus over the old cathedral site his father had purchased, and enlarges the mosques of Makkah, Madinah, and al-Aqsa.