The House of Umayya

Let's start with the short version of the story:

The Banu Umayya is very, very old. Their family goes back to Umayya ibn Abd-Shams, great-grandfather of Mu'awiya I, the fifth true Caliph of Islam. Under the rule of the Banu Umayya, Islam went from being the dominant religion of Arabia to being the dominant religion of the entire Western world. Constantinople, which had reconquered the entirety of the former Roman Empire, lost all but Anatolia, and their end in 1476 began eight centuries earlier under Yazid I. The march of Islam was only halted by treachery most foul - and before the dust had settled, the last survivors of the Banu Umayya fled to the western most reaches of their former empire, and built it again, better than the first time. Under their rule, al-Andalus displaced even great Damascus as the jewel of civilization: in 1000, Qurtuba was the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, bar none.

It didn't last forever, of course; treachery most foul, once again, and when the Berber fitna was finally over and al-Andalus was reconsolidated, it was under the Abbadids in Seville. The Abbadids gave way to a short period of Berber interlopers, who gave way to the Abbadids, who eventually gave way to the Five Families. But it's a testimony to the Banu Umayya that the civilization they began in that backwater peninsula was never overshadowed by the rest of the Umma.

And when the Five Families had been broken, and the bitch had been beaten, the Umayyads rose from the ashes and restored themselves. And when (not for the first time) they were laid low by treachery most foul, the survivors (again, not for the first time) fled to the westernmost reaches of their former empire, and built it again, better than before.

That's the short version of the story. It's not entirely true, but it's true enough. And even if some of it is lies, and some of it can't be called either way, that doesn't make it any less impressive. Going into that part, though, does make it a bit more complex.

The modern House of Umayya

The House of Umayya claims its name and descent from Umayya b. Abd Shams, and only brave fools in places with no lese-majesty laws know better than to say otherwise. The validity of that claim has always been contested, though, because al-Mujadid claimed descent from Hisham III. This is where the succession claims get problematic: nobody can prove Hisham III was even alive after 1036, and while Abbadid Seville had somebody claiming to be him, even they didn't take it too seriously. In any case, the Umayyad Restoration saw several libraries burned, and more than a few purged afterwards - which means it can't be proven either way. (The fact that a number of genealogies were destroyed in the purges does nothing to help their claim.)

al-Mujadid also traced his Umayyad descent through several other paths, and it's worth noting that the Banu Umayya wasn't wiped out during the Berber Fitna - it's entirely plausible that he was descended from several Umayyads, which would still have given him a plausibly legit claim to the name. Why he emphasized the least plausible of those claims is a mystery for the ages, but it was official state doxa until the fall of Umayyad Seville, and brutally punished. (None of the Umayyad families worry about it today.)

More importantly, though, the ruling dynasty of the Caliphate of Seville - whose claim to the Umayyad name is indisputable, if for no better reason than the fact that they're all descended from Umayya al-Mujadid - is different from the Banu Umayya in a big, important way: the Banu Umayya was just a clan of the tribute of Quraish. When, more than a thousand years later, they were once again mighty in the world, they were the House of Umayya: a noble family, if a Muslim one, of Western Europe.

The madness of the House of Umayya

The first time it became an issue was during the Restoration, when Ahmad b. Umayya, next in line to the succession after al-Mujadid himself, turned out to be a remarkably zealous (or bloodthirsty, depending on which side you were on) fighter against the Five Families. Nobody really noticed it at the time - there were atrocities to go around - but when the war died down, it turned out that he was hearing what he claimed was the voice of the angel Gabriel. Since that time, it has echoed down through the generations, and has appeared in every single one of them.

The House of Umayya has madness running in their veins.

Not all of them, exactly, but something in the blood causes a worrying number of them to develop serious mental illness at some point in their life. Nobody knows why. The madness knows no race or color - various Umayyads have mated with every ethnicity they could marry, seduce, rape, or buy on the slave market, to no effect. And it colors the world's perception of them, because even though many of them are neurotypical and psychologically healthy, simply being Umayyad means that their lives are lived in the public eye - and all of their individual quirks and personality traits are assumed, sometimes wrongly, to be symptomatic of the madness in the blood.

It bears mentioning at this point that "madness" is often rather vaguely defined. At one extreme, the family has Ahmad b. al-Mujadid, or his nephew [who?] who built the Winchester Alhambra. They're clearly mentally ill. But Yusuf I is counted as a "mad caliph" too, less for any actual disorder than for simply being crazy awesome. (Yusuf III is an interesting case of somebody whose "madness" falls somewhere between these poles; I've written him to be easily typed as having something autism-spectrum, but a good bit of his perceived madness is exactly that: perception, shaped by backbiters, the Caliphal Household and the man himself for political reasons.)

The Umayyad phratry

Like most of the Moorish world's khassa families, the House of Umayya established itself across the Atlantic Ocean. The fall of Seville split it into a phratry: two families that count as part of a whole, but act entirely independently.

Of these, the Andalusi half has fared the worst...

• Early on, the Andalusi Umayyads were the dominant ones: they were recognized by Spain, and indeed the rest of Europe, as the legitimate Umayyads. They were also the most tightly organized, answering as they did to a single person: al-Mahdi. Traditional Mahdism has always called for a new Caliphate of Seville under an Andalusi Umayyad.
• After al-Mahdi's death in the Second Mahdist War, the succession of the Andalusi Umayyads broke down under rival claims. None of these claimants were actually powerful enough to do anything with them, leading to the unique instance of an "Andalusi" family that no longer exists in the Old World.
• Across the waters, meanwhile,

...while the Aqsi half has fared somewhat better. The House's dominant Aqsi branch traces its descent to al-Mujadid through Abu Yusuf [who?], who made khalwa in the mid-1750s and established a powerbase in Moorish France-Outremer. From this branch of the family springs...

• The Yusufid succession, tracing its descent through Yusuf I. Since the collapse of Mahdism as a serious threat in the Old World, and the rise of the UCNA, the Yusufid line of the House has been recognized as "the" House of Umayya.
• The Sufyanids, tracing their descent through Sufyan b. Yusuf, are a notable subcategory of this family.
• The Cuban Umayyads, descended from certain of Yusuf's siblings [who?], a regionally important family in their own right. [details?]

This is a work in progress. It will be expanded upon.