Early Caliphate navy

The Arab Empire maintained and expanded a wide trade network across parts of Asia, Africa and Europe. This helped establish the Arab Empire (including the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid Caliphates and also Fatimids) as the world's leading economic power throughout the 8th–13th centuries according to the political scientist John M. Hobson. It is commonly believed that Mu‘awiya Ibn Abi Sufyan was the first planner and establisher of the Islamic navy.

The early caliphate naval conquest managed to mark long time legacy of Islamic maritime enterprises from the Conquest of Cyprus, the famous Battle of the Masts up to of their successor states such as the area Transoxiana from area located in between the Jihun River(Oxus/Amu Darya) and Syr Darya, to Sindh (present day Pakistan), by Umayyad, naval cove of "Saracen privateers" in La Garde-Freinet by Cordoban Emirate, and the Sack of Rome by the Aghlabids in later era.

Historian Eric E. Greek grouped Rashidun military constitution with their immediate successor states from the Umayyad until at least Abbasid caliphate era, along with their client emirates, as single entity, in accordance of Fred Donner criteria of functional states. This grouping were particularly apply to the naval forces of the caliphate as a whole. Meanwhile, Blankinship does not regard the transition of rule from Rashidun to Umayyad as the end of the military institution of the early caliphate, including its naval elements . This remains at least until the end of the rule of the 10th Umayyad caliph, Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, as Jihad as religious and political main motive for the military of 'early Jihad state' which spans from Rashidun caliphate until Hisham were still regarded by Blankinship as the same construct.