Banu Kilab
In the early 11th century, Salih ibn Mirdas assumed leadership of the Kilab and by 1025, he established an Aleppo-based emirate (principality) that spanned much of the western Jazira and northern Syria.
The Kilab were the core of the Mirdasid army and defended their realm, defeating the Byzantine emperor Romanos III at the Battle of Azaz in 1030 and fending off several Fatimid assaults in later years.
The Kilab retained scattered fortresses and remained a major source of military recruitment for the Mirdasids' successors, but they lost their paramountcy to Turkmen groups which had begun entering northern Syria in significant numbers from the late 11th century.
The Ayyubids confiscated the Kilab's last holdings in the region and put the tribe under the authority of an amir al-arab (state-sponsored commander of the Bedouin), an office held by the Al Fadl house of the rival Banu Tayy.
[4] The Banu Amir's original homeland was the area west of the Turubah oasis, extending eastward beyond Ranyah to the uplands south of the modern Mecca–Riyadh highway in Najd (central Arabia).
The Kilab's brother tribe of Ka'b and its sub-tribes of Uqayl, Qushayr, Ja'da, Harish, and Ajlan inhabited the wide stretch of territory from Ranyah and the northern approaches of Najran in the southwest to the Tuwaiq oases to the northeast.
[17] In revenge, Laqit gathered a coalition of the Tamim, the Banu Dhubyan of Ghatafan, the Asad, and contingents from the Kindite rulers of Bahrayn and the Lakhmid king al-Mundhir IV (r. 575–580).
[20] In Labid's rajaz before al-Nu'man's court he proclaimed: We are the best of ʿĀmir son of Ṣaʿṣaʿah; We feast our guests on platters ever full, And smite the heads beneath the battle-din.
[20][d] The Hawazin's relations with the Lakhmid kings were mainly predicated on transporting goods from al-Hira to the annual fair at Ukaz in the Hejaz (western Arabia), for which they were given a part of the profits.
[34] Mu'awiya boasted of his household and its leadership position in verse: A man am I of famous company, active in all good works, whose glory is high of head, inherited from our fathers: ... We render to the tribe all that is due and fitting: and we pardon its offenses against us, and [are admitted by all to be] its chiefs.
This assessment was questioned by Ella Landau-Tasseron, who posited that the Banu Amir and the Quraysh had been mutually interested in gaining greater, joint control of the annual Lakhmid caravans to Yemen.
[21] Despite their close ties with the Quraysh, which opposed Muhammad, the Banu Amir remained on generally peaceful terms with the nascent Muslim community; they had a mutual opponent in the Ghatafan tribes.
[71] The survivors of the attack killed two men of the Kilab on their return to Medina in revenge, prompting Muhammad to offer Abu Bara blood money for their slayings, which were judged to be illicit.
[77] The 8th-century historian Ibn Sa'd mentioned that in 9 AH (630/31 CE), eight delegations of the Banu Amir and its subtribes conferred with Muhammad in Medina, including one of the Kilab in general and another from the Ru'as.
In the account placing Alqama's apostasy after Muhammad's death, he was targeted in an expedition by Khalid ibn al-Walid, and consequently declared his Muslim faith and made peace with Abu Bakr.
[1] The caliphs in Medina founded the Hima Dariyya, located on the Kilab's stomping grounds, as a reserved area for the state around the 640s–650s,[86] exacerbating the existing tensions between the Ja'far on one side and the Abu Bakr and Dibab on the other over territory.
[116] Zufar, who had established himself in Jund Qinnasrin and led the district's troops against anti-Umayyad rebels in the Hejaz in 683,[92] revolted against the Umayyads and gave his allegiance to their Hejaz-based challenger, Caliph Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr.
[134] By the time Ahmad ibn Tulun, the nominal Abbasid governor of Egypt, conquered Syria in 878, the "Kilab ... established themselves as a force to be reckoned with", according to the historian Kamal Salibi.
[145] This, according to historian Thierry Bianquis, made the tribes "susceptible to Qarmatian [sic] propaganda denouncing the wealth of the urban Sunni population and the luxury of the pilgrimage caravans".
[145] The tribes frequently raided the agricultural lands of Hama, Ma'arrat al-Nu'man and Salamiyah, but nonetheless integrated well with the rural population due to their shared Shi;ite faith.
[145] Throughout the 10th and 11th centuries, the Kilab "represented an organised military force with powerful cavalry trained in mounted swordsmanship and not fearing to confront a government army on the field of battle", according to Bianquis.
[155] However, after Muqallid was killed and the Kilab aborted their siege of Kafartab, Mansur returned the prisoners to the dungeons, where many Kilabi chieftains were tortured, executed or died of poor conditions.
Opposed to Tayyi/Jarrahid domination of Palestine and Mirdasid control of central Syria, Dizbari confronted Salih and the Jarrahid emir Hassan ibn Mufarrij at the Battle of al-Uqhuwana near Tiberias in 1029.
Thimal sent an advance force of Kilabi tribesmen led by Muqallid ibn Kamil, which successively demolished the fortifications of Ma'arrat al-Nu'man, Hama and Homs to prevent their use by the Fatimids.
[177] Meanwhile, Thimal's Numayrid wife, al-Sayyida al-Alawiyya, engineered the takeover of Aleppo by her son from Nasr, Mahmud, who captured the city later that year with the Numayr and part of the Kilab.
[182] A Mirdasid emir of the Kilab, Muqallid ibn Kamil's son Mani, was killed by the Turkmens, which sapped Kilabi morale and compelled Mahmud to agree to terms with Atiyya.
[197] The devastation in northern Syria opened the way for Muslim ibn Quraysh to gain control of Aleppo in 1080, when Sabiq, Shabib and Waththab were compelled by the Kilab and the Aleppines, desperate from famine, and their Munqidhite vizier, to hand over the city.
Thus, Mirdasid rule in Aleppo came to a permanent end, though Muslim ibn Quraysh allotted the iqta'at of Atharib, Azaz, and another in the vicinity of Rahba to Shabib, Waththab, and Sabiq, respectively.
[211] Az-Zahir's measure prompted some Kilabi clans to migrate northward into Anatolia,[211] while those which remained in northern Syria allied with the Al Fadl, the ruling house of the Tayy and the heritable holders of the amir al-arab post.
[214] Zakkar writes that the entry of the new Kilabi tribesmen "no doubt had some considerable effect on the life and organization of the whole body of Kilab" in Syria, but "it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find any reliable information concerning this".
