[1] It was an ideal defensive region as enemy horsemen could not manage its terrain or enter its eastern and western slopes, where the Sulaym had their ḥimās (protected pastures).
[1] After the Muslim conquests of the 630s, most Sulaymi tribesmen migrated to northern Syria and from there to the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia), though others from the tribe settled in Kufa, Basra and throughout Khurasan.
[1] Before this, a chief of the Dhakwan, Muhammad ibn al-Khuza'i, was made commander of a contingent of Rabi'a and Mudar tribal confederates by Abraha, the Aksumite viceroy of Yemen and enemy of the Meccans.
[1] Another member of the Dhakwan, al-Hakim ibn Umayya, served as muhtasib of pre-Islamic Mecca, charged with supervising law and order with the unanimous consent of the Quraysh clans.
[1] The Sulaym also maintained good relations with the people of Medina, selling horses, camels, sheep and clarified butter in the city's markets and mediating between rival clans of the Banu Aws.
[1] Several clans of the Sulaym joined the Kilabi chief Amir ibn al-Tufayl in his attack targeting Muslim missionaries at Bi'r Ma'una in 625.
Among the Sulaym divisions and clans which defected were the Awf ibn Imru al-Qays, the Usayya and Sharid, the Amira led by al-Fuja'a, the Jariya, and possibly the Dhakwan.
[2] In the First Muslim Civil War, there were some Sulaym tribesmen who sided with Caliph Ali, but most backed Mu'awiya, where their support proved to be a major contribution to his victory in 661.
Afterward, Umayr and the Sulaym joined the paramount Qaysi rebel leader Zufar ibn al-Harith al-Kilabi, who was based in al-Qarqisiya.
[5] Medieval Muslim chroniclers report that in 1050 or 1051, the Sulaym and Hilal nomads were dispatched or encouraged to migrate to and take over Ifriqiya (central North Africa) by the Fatimids to punish that region's Zirid rulers for switching allegiance to the rival Abbasid Caliphate.
[4] However, Baadj urges that such reports "ought to [be] treat[ed] with skepticism" as the Fatimid state at the time was undergoing a great crisis, marked by a long famine and severe political instability.
[5] Thus, the Fatimids were not in a position to coerce the two Bedouin tribes to invade the Zirid realm; rather, the poor conditions in Egypt, namely the threat of starvation, motivated the Sulaym and Hilal to migrate westward into the Maghreb (greater western North Africa).