Naqib al-ashraf (Arabic: نقيب الأشراف) (plural: nuqaba or niqabat) was a governmental post in various Muslim empires denoting the head or supervisor of the descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
[1] Ashraf in the Ottoman Empire were accorded special privileges, including personal inviolability, certain tax exemptions and immunity from regular prosecution.
[3] In Aleppo, the ashraf played a more significant role in that city's affairs than anywhere else in the Ottoman Empire, including Cairo and Damascus, where the nuqaba al-ashraf often were or grew wealthy.
[2] This changed in the mid-18th century when Muhammad Abu Hadi, a member of Cairo-based al-Sadat al-Wafa'iyya ashraf family, was appointed to the post.
The role of the naqib al-ashraf in Egypt, besides the traditional roles of the office, included participation in various ceremonies such as the procession of the kiswah before it left with the Hajj pilgrim caravan to Mecca, and ensuring the ashraf families' participation in the procession of the mahmal (decorated litter symbolizing authority of the sultan) to Mecca.
The influence of Basra's nuqaba al-ashraf fluctuated depending on the personal wealth of the individual naqib or the Ottoman authorities' use of him in the region's political affairs.
In 1703, a member of the al-Husayni family, Muhammad ibn Mustafa, led a two-year rebellion in Jerusalem,[13] after which he fled and was later captured and executed.
They are related to the Alaouite dynasty of Morocco and are said to have migrated to the Sultanate of Kano in Nigeria due to conflicts and wars within the Moroccan monarchy after the death of Ismail ibn Sharif.
The claim of being descendants of Muhammad enabled them to be regarded as a kind of nobility, with them becoming privileged in the chieftaincy system of the Kano Emirate.
Most of their ancestors were Islamic saints, the Muallimawa family Dynasty a branch of the Madinawa clan holds the position of Naqib al- ashraf.