If you mean the Umayyad period specifically (661–750 CE), keep in mind that it was relatively short-lived. And it can be overshadowed by what came before it (the initial rise of Islam) and what followed (the ‘Abbasid “golden age”).

I’d wager that It really depends on the classes you take. In high school, I learned fuckall about anything that wasn’t western Europe or the US (including barely anything about Persia) simply because my high school’s curriculum, or at least the AP curriculum, was structured that way. But in university, there are plenty of courses offered at my school that talk about European-Muslim relations during the early modern era, and so on. It just depends on where you take classes I suppose. Individual teachers might also be biased due to their own courses of study or their backgrounds. I wouldn’t simply say that the Ummayad Caliphate is underrepresented in academia... Especially in higher education.

A combination of Eurocentrism, Anglocentrism, and general ignorance.

It's often not taught in schools because they tend to focus almost entirely on European and colonial/postcolonial American history. The things that Americans and Europeans see as "their" history and fit the narrative they want to tell. At least from the perspective of an American history curriculum, pre-United States history only matters insofar as it acts as a prologue to United States history/

Things like the Umayyad conquest of Spain are left out due to Anglocentrism. At least in America, they want to tell the history they see as their history. Spain does factor into that until Columbus comes in and discovers America. which sets the stage for colonization, which sets the stage for English colonization, which sets the stage for the United States.

As for why it's not "talked about" in popular discourse, that's because it's not part of "popular history." The Romans (but not the later Eastern Romans or the earlier Kingdom of Rome), the Greeks (but again, not the Greek speaking Eastern Romans), the English (but not the pre-Anglo Saxon Britons), the Colonial Americans (but not the Native Americans), the Crusaders (but not the Islamic defenders) all get movies, and TV specials, and pop history books written about them. So what they did, and how they lived their lives are pretty well known to the general public.

But the Umayyads don't get this same treatment. They tend to only get discussed in academia or in specialist historical works. So, most people don't really know who they were, what they did, or how they lived. They aren't aware how big the Caliphate got, and the impact it had on history. They probably aren't even aware that an "Umayyad Caliphate" existed and how it differed from any other Arab state.

Sadly, it's a self causing cycle. Arab history isn't taught in schools, so it doesn't become part of our popular histories. No one knows about it, so no one thinks to teach it in schools. So, because of that, one of the largest and most important empires in world history is completely unknown in the west outside of academia.

Hi there! You’ve asked a question along the lines of ‘why didn’t I learn about X’. We’re happy to let this question stand, but there are a variety of reasons why you may find it hard to get a good answer to this question on /r/AskHistorians.

Firstly, school curricula and how they are taught vary strongly between different countries and even even different states. Additionally, how they are taught is often influenced by teachers having to compromise on how much time they can spend on any given topic. More information on your location and level of education might be helpful to answer this question.

Secondly, we have noticed that these questions are often phrased to be about people's individual experience but what they are really about is why a certain event is more prominent in popular narratives of history than others.

Instead of asking "Why haven't I learned about event ...", considering asking "What importance do scholars assign to event ... in the context of such and such history?" - the latter question is often closer to what to what people actually want to know and is more likely to get a good answer from an expert. If you intend to ask the 'What importance do scholars assign to event X' question instead, let us know and we'll remove this question.

Thank you!