Life
Abd al-Rahman was born in c. 616,[1] the son of the prominent Muslim general and member of the Qurayshi clan of Banu Makhzum, Khalid ibn al-Walid.[2] Abd al-Rahman's mother was Khalid's wife Asma, the daughter of Anas ibn Mudrik, a prominent chieftain and poet of the Khath'am tribe who was active during the pre-Islamic period and died several years after the advent of Islam in the 620s.[2][3] Abd al-Rahman likely entered military service during the caliphate of Uthman (r. 644–656).[2] During Uthman's reign, he was appointed the governor of Jund Hims (military district of Homs) by Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, the overall governor of the province of Syria.[4][5] Abd al-Rahman was dispatched by Mu'awiya to command a number of military campaigns against the Byzantines in Anatolia and was referred to in the Greek sources "Abderachman".[5][6] He fended off a raid against Mu'awiya's territory in the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) by the Iraqi forces of Caliph Ali (r. 656–661) in 657.[5] Later that year, Abd al-Rahman served as a commander in the Syrian army of Mu'awiya against Ali at the Battle of Siffin,[2] where he fought with distinction and held the banner of the Syrians.[7] His brother Muhajir fought for Ali's side in the same battle and was killed.[7] During the subsequent arbitration talks in Adhruh or Dumat al-Jandal in 658 or 659 between the representatives of Ali and Mu'awiya, Abd al-Rahman was among those in the latter's faction to witness the arbitration document.[8]
Abd al-Rahman continued as governor of Jund Hims during the caliphate of Mu'awiya beginning in 661.[2] In 664/665 and 665/666, he led the winter campaigns against the Byzantines along the Anatolian front.[9] According to the Muslim traditional sources, Abd al-Rahman posed a threat to Mu'awiya's ambitions to appoint his own Yazid as his successor and the caliph resolved to eliminate him.[5] At the time, he was the last surviving son of Khalid ibn al-Walid and his descent from the reputable general, as well as his own valor and effectiveness fighting the Byzantines, had endeared him to the Syrian Arabs.[10] To that end, Mu'awiya allegedly had his Christian physician, Ibn Uthal, poison Abd al-Rahman upon the latter's return to Homs from the Byzantine front in 666.[5][10] The physician was later killed by a kinsman of Abd al-Rahman called Khalid, who was either his son or the son of his brother Muhajir.[11] This Khalid was consequently imprisoned and fined Ibn Uthal's blood money by Mu'awiya to protect him from potential retaliation.[5][12] Relations between the influential Banu Makhzum, who were mostly concentrated in the Hejaz (western Arabia), and Mu'awiya deteriorated as a result of Abd al-Rahman's alleged poisoning.[7] The Orientalist historian Henri Lammens doubts the reliability of the narrative, which he relates to the anti-Christian violence in Homs around that time.[5] Abd al-Rahman's son Khalid was a commander of a naval campaign against the Byzantines in 668 or 669.[13][14]
The line of Khalid ibn al-Walid died out with the deaths of Abd al-Rahman's roughly forty male descendants as a result of a plague in Syria toward the end of the Umayyad period (661–750).[7] Abd al-Rahman is buried alongside his father and one of his father's wives, Fadda, in Homs.[15] In 1908, the Ottoman rulers of Syria built the Khalid ibn al-Walid Mosque around the site claimed since at least the 12th century to contain their graves.[15]