I40 THE PROGRESS THROUGH EGYPT ii. i. x.

At the conquest of Egypt the Yashkur section of the tribe estab-Hshed themselves upon the hill called after them, the site of Ibn Tulun's mosque. Many other sections of the tribe also entered Egypt in the seventh and eighth centuries and settled round Alexandria'-. In 798 A.D. some 15,000 Andalusian refugees, who had been banished from Spain by the Ommayyad prince el Hakam and had landed at Alexandria, entered into a league with the Beni Lakhm; but the two parties soon quarrelled and in 815 the Andalusians succeeded in taking the town.

During the same half-century the Beni Lakhm were involved in the civil war that followed the death of Harun el Rashid and evinced great turbulence at intervals.

In Makrizi's time they were very numerous in Upper Egypt and some thirty of their sections are mentioned by name. There were also some of them still settled round Alexandria.

Among other Kahtanite tribes portions of which are known to have entered Egypt at the time of the conquest or soon after it we may note the Beni Hamdan, the large Himyaritic family of Dhu AsBAH to which belonged Malik ibn Anas the founder of the MaUki sect®, and a section of Azd, all of whom settled at Giza.

Let us now take the best known of the Isma'ilitic or 'Adnanite tribes who took part in the invasion of Egypt. The most famous are the Kenana and the Kuraysh.

XI KenAna and KuRAYSH. The eponymous ancestor of the Kenana may have lived about 100 a.d. The home of his descendants for successive centuries had been in the Hegaz and Tihama round Mekka. The great sub-tribe of Kuraysh became separate from the parent stock some time before the rise of the Prophet and their most famous family, that of KusAi, obtained the guardianship of the Ka'aba about 440 a.d.° 1 Makrizi, Khetdt, i, 361. There was also a section of Rabi'a called Yashkur (Caussin de Perceval, 11, 270).

* One of their number was Governor of Egypt in 750 a.d. (Lane-Poole, Hist.

P- 49)-* Makrizi, loc. cit. 11, 493, 494-Alexandria was retaken in 827 and the Andalusians were expelled to Crete: see Lane-Poole, loc. cit. p. 36, quoting Dozy, II, 68-76, and Quatremfere.

* Lane-Poole, loc. cit. p. 38; Makrizi, loc. cit. i, 269.

Makrfzi, ap. Quatremere (11, 197).

" Wustenfeld, 3.

' Vide Makdzi, Khetdt, 11, 606 and 607, and Abu Salih (p. 173). The latter speaks of Giza as built exclusively for the Hamdan: a note by Evetts gives a reference to el Siuti's Husn el Muhadira, i, 81 (Arabic). Cp. Butler, p. 431.

* Caussin de Perceval, loc. cit. Table VII L " Ihid. I, 193, and Wiistenfeid, I, 268.

*" Caussin de Perceval, i, 235.