The Kilab's ancestral home was in central Arabia and its tribesmen first established themselves in northern Syria and the western Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia) in the years after the 630s–Muslim conquest.
[4] A third major wave of Kilabi migrants, principally from the Abu Bakr branch of the tribe from which the Mirdasids sprung, had invaded northern Syria in 932.
[5] This Kilabi migration was encouraged or directly supported by the Qarmatian movement,[6] a radical millennarian Shi'a Isma'ili sect that had spread from southern Iraq in the second half of the 9th century.
[8] 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.
[8] Salibi notes that the northern Syrian Kilab's main military assets were its "Bedouin swiftness of movement" and its reservoir of tribal kin in the Jazira.
[13] Twice the Kilab betrayed the Hamdanids and their allies, and in return, demanded from Mansur numerous villages to supply them with grain, pastures to breed their flocks, and war horses.
[13] Among the Kilabi chiefs jailed by Mansur was Salih ibn Mirdas, the founder of the Mirdasid dynasty, whose family was based in the area of Qinnasrin.
[16] Salih had captured the fortress town of al-Rahba, situated along the Euphrates River, at the strategic crossroads between Iraq and Syria, in 1008, boosting his prestige among the Kilab and probably encouraging his wider territorial ambitions.
[25] By then, he had also captured a string of central Syrian towns and fortresses, including Sidon on the Mediterranean, Baalbek and Homs, affording his new, Aleppo-based emirate an outlet to the sea and control of the trade route to Damascus.
[29] In the aftermath, Nasr became the sole Mirdasid ruler of Aleppo with the backing of the Byzantines, while Thimal's power was centered in al-Rahba, where most of the Kilab supported him.
[35] Nevertheless, Thimal vacated his seat in Aleppo due to an inability to satiate the financial demands of his Kilabi tribal base and the growing conflict with his Balis-based brother, Atiyya, who was backed by a good part of their tribe.
He was unable to oust Mahmud by force, but the Kilabi chiefs brokered a settlement, giving Thimal control of Aleppo in 1061, in return for financial concessions.
The Turks began moving into northern Syria in greater numbers, forcing Mahmud to convert to Sunni Islam and become a vassal of the Seljuk sultan.
Conflicts between him and members of his family, along with several different Turkish groups, left the Mirdasid domains devastated, and in 1080, prompted by Sabiq, the Uqaylid emir of Mosul, Sharaf al-Dawla Muslim, took over Aleppo.
The ruling dynasty allegedly commenced in the early 11th century, when a mystic by the name of Pir Mansour travelled from Hakkari to the village of Pîran, close to the fortress of Egil.
He attained widespread fame among the local Kurds and Mirdasids, and his son Pir Bedir took the fortress of Egil by force and initiated the dynasty's rule over the region.