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Muslim rule expanded to Khorāsān, garrison cities were founded at Merv and Sīstān as bases for expeditions into Central Asia and northwestern India, and the invasion of northwestern Africa was begun. The Syrian army became the basis of Umayyad strength, enabling the creation of a united empire through greater control of the conquered provinces and of Arab tribal rivalries. The Sufyānids, notably Muʿāwiyah I (reigned 661–680), centralized caliphal authority in Damascus. Umayyad rule was divided between two branches of the family: the Sufyānids (reigned 661–684), descendants of Abū Sufyān and the Marwanids (reigned 684–750), Marwān I ibn al-Hakam and his successors. The Great Mosque of Damascus, the earliest surviving stone mosque, built in the 8th century by Caliph al-Walīd I in the Umayyad capital. Muʿāwiyah then established himself as the first Umayyad caliph. In the first Muslim civil war ( fitnah 656–661)-the struggle for the caliphate following the murder of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, the third caliph (reigned 644–656)-Abū Sufyān’s son Muʿāwiyah, then governor of Syria, emerged victorious over ʿAlī, Muhammad’s son-in-law and fourth caliph. They had initially resisted Islam, not converting until 627, but subsequently became prominent administrators under Muhammad and his immediate successors. The Umayyads, headed by Abū Sufyān, were a largely merchant family of the Quraysh tribe centred at Mecca. Umayyad dynasty, also spelled Omayyad, the first great Muslim dynasty to rule the empire of the caliphate (661–750 ce), sometimes referred to as the Arab kingdom (reflecting traditional Muslim disapproval of the secular nature of the Umayyad state). Playing off broad discontent, the ʿAbbāsids spurred a successful rebellion that eventually upended the Umayyads in 750. By 717, the Umayyads were having trouble defending frontiers and preventing insurrections, and the financial situation of the empire had become untenable, despite attempts by the caliph ʿUmar II to stave off disintegration. The reign of the Umayyad dynasty began to unravel after the empire became overextended.