Arab ancestry is more probably from Rabi'ah tribes, possibly Banu Shayban, though this does not preclude Kurdish and/or Assyrian roots.
[10] In 2015, the founding chairman Mehmet Ali Aslan became the first Mhallami to be elected a member of the Turkish Parliament from the HDP party.
[11] The last leader of the Mhallami in Turkey is lawyer Şeyhmus Miroğlu, member of beytil emir.
[14] The Mhallami had traditionally settled in large numbers in Lebanese regions such as Tripoli, the Beqaa Valley and Beirut where they have become an integral part of the country's Sunni community after migrating from the Mardin Province in Turkey.
[15] Their origin and legal status became a particular concern when they started to seek asylum in Western European countries en masse in the early 1980s.