Jarrahids
Afterward, the Jarrahids raided Mecca-bound Hajj pilgrim caravans and vacillated between the Fatimids, Byzantines and individual Muslim rulers in Syria.
By 1011–12, the Jarrahids controlled all of interior Palestine up to Tiberias and defied the Fatimids by declaring their own caliph, al-Hasan ibn Ja'far, at Ramla.
The Fatimid caliph al-Hakim then paid Mufarrij to end the rebellion, but not long after dispatched an expedition against the Jarrahids in which they were driven from Palestine.
[6] Daghfal provided safe haven for an officer of the Qarmatian ruler, Abu Tahir al-Jannabi, when the latter departed to lead an expedition against Fatimid Egypt in 972 CE.
[6] Two years later, a certain Hassan ibn al-Jarrah (possibly the same person as Daghfal) was a commander of auxiliaries in the Qarmatian army during a second invasion of Egypt.
[6][7] Daghfal's son, Mufarrij, entered the historical record during the Fatimid struggle with Alptakin, a Qarmatian-backed Buyid commander who took over Damascus.
[1] Alptakin was defeated at the Battle of Ramla in 977, and Mufarrij captured him between Kafr Saba and Qalansawa to collect the 100,000 gold dinar-bounty placed on his head by the Fatimid caliph al-Aziz.
[9] Fadl soon after turned against Mufarrij, but was recalled to Cairo by Caliph al-Aziz, essentially leaving the Jarrahids as the virtual rulers of Palestine.
[3] This time, Mufarrij fled north toward Homs where he was given safe haven by the Hamdanids' Circassian governor, Bakjur, in late 982.
[1] By 997, the Jarrahids had attempted to sack Ramla, but were forced back and fled to the Jabal Aja and Salma mountains in northern Arabia, the ancestral territory of the Tayy.
[1] Al-Hakim bribed the Jarrahids to end their revolt, and afterward al-Hasan returned to Mecca, while Abu'l Qasim fled to Iraq.
[2] Such an alliance between the three principal Arab tribes of the Levant was unprecedented and was meant to prevent outsider dominance of the Syrian desert and steppe.
[15] The Tayy, Kalb and Kilab renewed their alliance in 1024/25, but their appeal for support from the Byzantines was rebuffed by Emperor Basil II.
The Jarrahids later raided Afamiya on behalf of the Byzantines and assisted the latter with capturing the fortress of al-Maniqa in the Jabal Ansariya range.
[18] As a result, Hassan was forced into confinement in Constantinople until 1040 as a means to prevent his tribe, with its unstable allegiances, from potentially attacking Antioch.
[19] According to Syrian historian Mustafa A. Hiyari, information on Rabi'a in the medieval sources is confused, though he most likely was an emir of Bedouin auxiliaries for the Burid ruler of Damascus, Toghtekin (r.
[19] Fadl is described in the 13th-century chronicle of Ibn al-Athir (d. 1233) as an emir, who, in 1107/08, vacillated between the Crusaders, who conquered the Levantine coast in 1099, and the Fatimids, whose rule had been limited to Egypt since 1071.
[20] This prompted Toghtekin to expel Fadl from Syria, after which he formed an alliance with Sadaqa, the chieftain of the Arab Mazyadid dynasty in Iraq, before defecting to the Seljuks.
[20] They were described by historian Marius Canard (1888–1982) as a "turbulent family who were not without significance as pawns on the chess-board of Syria in the 10th–11th centuries, whom the Fatimids alternately attacked and wooed, whom the Byzantines succeeded in using, but who seem to have created for themselves, in their own best interests, a rule of duplicity, treason and pillage".
[19][23] Collectively, these clans formed the Banu Rabi'a, and together with their allies, they dominated the desert and steppe regions between the Euphrates valley in the north to the central Najd and northern Hejaz in the south.
However, under the Mamluks (1260–1516), the post became hereditary within the house of Al Fadl,[25] who had authority over the Bedouin of northern Syria and held numerous iqtaʿat, including Palmyra, Salamiyah, Maarrat al-Nu'man, Sarmin and Duma.
[13] The Al Mira's emirs held similar authority under the Mamluks and were known as muluk al-arab ("kings of the Bedouin tribes; sing.
