Banu Judham

Before the advent of Islam in the early 7th century, the Judham nomads roamed the desert frontier areas of Byzantine Palestine and Syria, controlling places such as the Madyan, Amman, Ma'an, Adhruh, Tabuk as far south as Wadi al-Qura.

[1] On the eve of the Muslim conquests, they dominated the territory extending from the environs of Tabuk northward to the areas east of the Wadi Araba valley and the Dead Sea, including the Balqa region around modern Amman.

Rather, their genealogical relationship was forged to seal their political alliance, either after they entered Palestine in the mid-7th century or before, when their abodes were concentrated east of the Dead Sea and Arabah Valley.

[1][5][6] However, their Christianity was disputed by the 9th-century historian Hisham ibn al-Kalbi who asserted that during the Byzantine era, the Judham worshiped the pagan idol al-Uqaysir.

[1] The Islamic prophet's expedition to Tabuk in 630 was partly a response to reports that the Judham and Lakhm were mobilizing with the Byzantine army in the Balqa.

[15] During the reigns of Mu'awiya I and Yazid I (r. 680–683), the Quda'a tribal confederation, of which the Banu Kalb were the leading component, obtained high ranks and privileges in the caliphs' courts.

[18] Following the death of Yazid's son and successor Mu'awiya II in 684, the Judham under Natil allied with Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, a rival, Mecca-based claimant to the caliphate, while Rawh supported the Umayyad Marwan I.

[1][19] Following Marwan's victory over the supporters of Ibn al-Zubayr at the Battle of Marj Rahit in 684, the Quda'a and the Kalb changed genealogical affiliation to the Qahtan and formed the Yaman (Yemenite) confederation in opposition to the pro-Zubayrid Qays tribes of northern Syria.

[22] At least part of the Judham eventually fused with the Amila in the Galilee area, and in the early 11th century, they moved into southern, present-day Lebanon.

[23] In the Mamluk era in the 13th–15th centuries, the historians Ibn Fadlallah al-Umari and al-Qalqashandi mention that the Banu Sakhr tribe inhabiting the province of al-Karak in modern Jordan belonged to the Judham, though in the Banu Sakhr's modern-day oral traditions, they claim descent from an 18th-century tribe of the Hejaz which entered modern Jordan in the 19th century.