ILL VII. IN THE MIDDLE AGES 135 or some of the Ben: Kurra section, and neither the Beni Sa'ad nor the other five subsections were really descended from Kumayl at all.

It is therefore probable that the Beni Kumayl had obtained the headship over a large number of closely related sections of Gudham, and that these were generally known as Beni Kumayl for that reason. It is clear also that among the Beni Kumayl were numbers of alien tribesmen, for Makrizi speaks of the Zayd Menat subsection as including Kenana, Beni 'Urwa and Beni Kelb, and certainly none of these were Gudham.

In addition to the Zubayb and Beni Kumayl there were other branches of Gudham near Alexandria.

In the time of Saladin (Salah el Din), when, that is, the Kurdish dynasty of 'Ayyubites had supplanted the Fatimites in Egypt in 1 171 A.D., the tribe of Gudham, who had been very powerful under the previous dynasty, suffered something of a reverse, and their place was to some extent taken by the Beni Tai proper, and in particular by the Tha'aliba branch of that tribe.

VII Tai. These Beni Tai had entered Egypt at a later date than the Beni Gudham. When Makrizi wrote they had been largely represented in Egypt only for a period of rather more than three centuries. The Awlad Sinbis branch had increased in numbers in southern Palestine to an alarming extent and caused considerable trouble to the local government. So in 1050 a.d. the vizier Muhammad el Yazuri turned them out and they moved to the Bahira province in the north of Egypt and settled there among the Gudhamite Beni Kurra. These Awlad Sinbis consisted of Awlad Labid (including Awlad Hazm and Awlad Mahzab), Awlad 'Amr, Awlad 'Adi (including Awlad Aban), and Awlad Fatah'.

The power of the Tai increased under the Fatimites, and when the 'Ayyubites conquered Egypt a fresh posse of the tribe came in with them. These were the Garm and the Tha'aliba sections, who had previously been settled in Syria.

Throughout the 'Ayyubite period (11 71-1249) these Beni Tai maintained their power but the feud with the Gudham did not die The only Kumayl mentioned by Wiistenfeld was son of Kurra.

- Quatremere, "Arwah." ' Makrizi, ap. Quatremere (ii, 197).

* It will be remembered that the Gudham were themselves originally a branch of Tai.

Quatremere, II, 191. * Wiistenfeld, " Hizmir."

' Quatremere, 11. 191 ; Wiistenfeld, i, 422 and 11, 6.

* Quatremere, loc. cit.; Wiistenfeld, i, 183. The name Garm was a surname applied to a certain Tha'aliba ibn 'Amr on account of a woman whom he brought up, but there was another separate branch of Tai also called Tha'aliba, viz. that referred to in Part iv (D i, vil), in speaking of the Messfrfa.