One facet of the rapid expansion of the community of Believers during the first century and a half AH was the development of a wide range of institutions and practices of government. Although literary sources of later date (mostly from the later second, the third, and the fourth centuries AH) offer some hints about the nature of these institutions and practices as early as the first decades following Muhammad’s death in 632 CE, most of these institutions and practices only begin to become clearly visible during the period of rule by the Umayyad dynasty (661-750 CE). The limited documentary evidence, coupled with the later literary evidence, suggests that during the Umayyad period, an effort was made to rename institutions and practices central to the operation of the state using terminology drawn from the Qur’an—a process we can call “Qur’anicization.” The goal of this process was to legitimate the Umayyad state and government by linking them with the divine revelation and the person of the prophet—in effect, to “Islamicize” the state. The best-known example of this process of Qur’anicization involves the term used for the head of state. Every known document (inscription, papyrus, tiraz fabric, coin) for the early Umayyad period refers to the head of state as amir al-mu’minin, “commander of the Believers,” a title that reflects clearly the ruler’s position as commander of the community, and the community’s self-conception as a community of Believers. Beginning with ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 685-705 CE), however, there appear documents (in particular, coins) referring to him using the somewhat obscure Qur’anic term khalifa (“caliph”). Presumably, the older term amir al-mu’minin, although well known and perfectly descriptive, was considered inadequate because it was not found in the Qur’an. This process of “Qur’anicizing” crucial terms seems to have been Umayyad policy, for a similar process can be traced for a number of other institutions and practices. They reveal the Umayyads’ concern with establishing the legitimacy of the Muslim community as the heirs of the prophet Muhammad and guardians of God’s revelation, and also their concern to establishing their own legitimacy as rulers of the Muslim community. In so doing, the Umayyads did much to establish—for their own age and for all subsequent ones—just what “Islam” and “Muslim” meant.