Abd ar-Rahman I

Abd al-Rahman I, more fully Abd al-Rahman ibn Mu'awiya ibn Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (731–788), was the founder of a Muslim dynasty that ruled the greater part of Iberia for nearly three centuries (including the succeeding Caliphate of Córdoba). At the time it was known by the Arabs as al-Andalus. Abd al-Rahman's establishment of a government in al-Andalus represented a branching from the rest of the Caliphate of Damascus, which had been brought under the Abbasid following the overthrow of the Umayyad dynasty from Damascus in 750.