Banu Kalb

From its footholds in the Ghouta and Palmyra oases, the tribe revolted against the Abbasids on several occasions in the 8th–10th centuries, at first in support of Umayyad claimants to the caliphate and later as key troops of the Qarmatians, whose suppression contributed to the Kalb's political isolation.

After the Muslim conquest, the tribe expanded its presence into Syria proper, taking the dominant position in the Golan Heights, the northern Jordan Valley, the Damascus area, and in and around Homs and Palmyra.

[3] They seasonally migrated from there deep into the vast desert steppe between Syria and Mesopotamia,[1][3] which the Arabic sources called the Samawa[4] or Samawat Kalb, after the tribe,[1] especially the southwestern part of this region.

To the west of al-Jawf, the tribe's Banu Amir al-Akbar branch roamed between the oasis of Tayma in the south to the wells of Quraqir in the northern Wadi Sirhan depression.

[1] With the advent of Islam in the 630s, the Kalb began to enter Syria in large numbers, at first making their abodes in the Golan Heights, the northern Jordan Valley, and in and around Damascus.

A minor proportion of the tribe settled down in the garrison town and administrative center of Kufa in Iraq during the same period, while many Kalbite tribesmen established themselves in Muslim Spain as part of the Syrian expeditionary forces sent there in the 8th century.

[5] At the time of the mid-10th-century geographer Ibn Hawqal, the diyar (tribal territories) of the Kalb extended from the area of Siffin near Raqqa, off the western bank of the Euphrates, to Tayma.

This expanse excluded the area of al-Rahba and largely bordered the southern Syrian and northern Hejazi diyar of the Fazara tribe, a branch of the Ghatafan.

[7][8] Because of its inclination toward sedentarism, through the 10th century, the Kalb gradually lost its dominant position in the Dumat al-Jandal and Wadi Sirhan regions to its Tayy allies, while those who remained nomadic either migrated to join their kinsmen in central Syria or kept a low profile in their traditional dwelling places.

Some sources claimed that Quda'a was a son of Ma'add, thus making the tribe northern Arabians, or a descendant of Himyar, the semi-legendary patriarch of the southern Arabs.

[1][29] The Kalb was put under the Ghassanids' authority and, like other allied tribes, was charged with guarding the Byzantines' eastern frontier against Sassanian Persia and the latter's Arab vassals in al-Hira, the Lakhmids.

As a result of their firm incorporation in the Byzantine foederati system, the Kalb "became accustomed to military discipline and to law and order", according to the historian Johann Fück.

[31] A few individual Kalbite tribesmen in Mecca converted to Islam, including Zayd ibn Haritha and Dihya al-Kalbi, Muhammad's purported emissary to the Byzantine emperor, Heraclius.

[36] While al-Asbagh remained loyal to the Medina-based Muslim state during the subsequent Ridda wars,[33] when most Arab tribes broke off their allegiance, another faction of the Kalb in Dumat al-Jandal, under the chief Wadi'a, rebelled,[38] but was suppressed.

In the mid-to-late 630s, Caliph Umar dismissed the Muslims' supreme commander in Syria, Khalid ibn al-Walid, and reassigned his forces, derived largely from the Mudar and Rabi'a tribal groups of Arabia, to the Sasanian front in Iraq.

[44] In 639, Umar appointed Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, a member of the powerful Umayyad clan of the Quraysh, to the governorships of the Damascus and Jordan districts, which collectively corresponded with central Syria.

[47] Mu'awiya married two Kalbite noblewomen, including Maysun, the daughter of Bahdal ibn Unayf, the Kalb's preeminent chieftain,[43] who remained Christian until his death sometime before 657.

[53] A third Umayyad contender for the succession was the son of Sa'id ibn al-As, Amr al-Ashdaq, who had also forged marital ties with a leading Kalbite family.

The Judham of Palestine and the South Arabian tribes which dwelt in the Homs district defected to the Quda'a's side after Marj Rahit, forming the Yaman coalition in opposition to the Qays.

[46] In June 745, the Kalbite chief of Palmyra, al-Asbagh ibn Dhu'ala, led a revolt against Marwan II in Homs, but the Kalb and its Yamanite allies were defeated.

[74] The Kalb-led Yamanites were the chief backers of another Umayyad claimant to the caliphate, Abu al-Umaytir al-Sufyani, who took power in Damascus in 811, amid the Great Abbasid Civil War.

By 813, Ibn Bayhas reverted to Abbasid allegiance, prompting the two Umayyad claimants to the caliphate to take refuge with the Kalb in its Ghouta villages of Mezzeh, Darayya and Beit Lihya until their natural deaths.

In 866, Utayf refused to recognize the new Abbasid caliph and was captured and executed by the general Ahmad ibn al-Muwallad, but the Kalb of the Homs countryside continued to resist.

Unlike the Tayy and Kilab, who were relative newcomers, most of the long-established Kalb tribesmen were settled peasants who lost their traditional nomadic mobility by this time.

[80] At this point, the Kalb economically depended on tolls exacted from the caravans travelling between al-Rahba and Homs and Damascus, as well as taxes on the agricultural output from the Palmyra oasis and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains.

[81] Nomadic clans of the Kalb which controlled Palmyra and the Samawa found a strong patron in the Qarmatian movement,[46] and became propagandists of this millenarian Isma'ili Shi'a sect.

[83] Later that year, the Kalbite converts under al-Husayn's brother, Yahya, defeated and killed the Abbasid garrison commander of Rusafa, Sabuk al-Daylami, then stormed the city, looting it and burning its mosque.

[84] The latter's Kalb-dominated army, led by the da'i and chief al-Nu'man of the Ullays, was devastated by the forces of the Abbasid caliph al-Muktafi (r. 902–908) at the Battle of Hama in November 903.

With the exception of the Tayy under the Jarrahids' descendant branches and the Mazyadids of al-Hilla, the Bedouin tribes disappear from the political map of the region by the end of the 11th century.

[46][103] A Kalbite family from the Kinana branch, the Banu Munqidh, which had established an emirate in the Orontes Valley in the 1020s, continued to operate under the suzerainty of Syria's Turkish atabegs until its demise in 1157.