Sufyan ibn Awf
Arab military commander / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sufyān ibn ʿAwf ibn al-Mughaffal al-Azdī al-Ghāmidī (Arabic: سفيان بن عوف بن المغفل الأزدي الغامدي) (died 672 or 673/674) was an Arab commander in the service of the Rashidun caliphs Umar (r. 634–644) and Uthman (r. 644–656) and the Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680). He fought as a partisan of Mu'awiya against Caliph Ali during the First Muslim Civil War, leading a raid against the latter's forces in Iraq. Throughout his military career, he was major commander in the wars with the Byzantine Empire. Though the medieval Arabic, Greek and Syriac accounts are not entirely consistent, he most likely was at the head of a large Arab army that was decisively defeated by the Byzantines in 673/74 and was slain during the battle.