142 THE PROGRESS THROUGH EGYPT ii. i. xi.

sive Ommayad and 'Abbasid governors i, and we shall see that at least one party of them crossed the Red Sea into the Sudan in the eighth century. Early in the tenth century the branch descended from Ga'afir ibn Abu Talib was expelled from Alekka by the Beni HusAYN and from the country north of it by the Beni Harb, and took refuge in Egypt. In Ibn Khaldun's time they were settled between Aswan and Kus with the Beni Kanz, and were known as the Shurafa el Ga'afira: they were chiefly employed in trade. The Ga'afira of the present day are their descendants.

In 1400 the KuRAYSH were mostly settled round Ashmunayn whence they had ousted the Guhayna ; others lived side by side with the Guhayna in el Siut and Manfalut districts, or scattered throughout Upper Egypt*.

Among their chief subdivisions Makrizi mentions the Beni Ga'afir, the Beni Talha, the Beni Zubayr, the Beni Shayba, the Beni Makhzum, the Beni Ommayya, the Beni Zahra, and the Beni Sahm (the family of 'Amr ibn el 'Asi).

XII Kays 'AylAn. About 727 a.d. a portion of the great tribe of Kays 'Aylan was brought from the Upper Negd of Arabia by the treasurer 'Obaydulla ibn el Habhab and settled in the eastern Hauf .

In that year a Kaysite, el Wali'd ibn Rifa'a el Fahmi, was Governor of Egypt'.

According to Makrizi only a few individuals of the Fahm and 'Adwan sections of the tribe had previously been in Egypt, but this statement seems inaccurate, for we know that between 709 and 727, not counting el Walid, there had been no less than three Kaysite Governors of Egypt, two of the Fahm and one of the 'Abs section, and these would not have come unattended by numbers of their own tribesmen.

El Kindi, too, mentions that at the time of the conquest a part of el Fostat was laid out by the tribe of " Kinana ibn 'Amr ibn el Kibr ibn Fahm," i.e. by a section of Kays. We shall also see that other sections of Kays were well represented before 727 a.d.

For the number of these see following chapter, para. viii.

See following chapter, para. xi.

' Ibn Khaldun, ed. de Slane, i, 9-1 1 ; ed. ar. vol. 6, pp. 5, 6, Bk. n ; cp. Makrizi, Khetdt, II, 710.

' Makrizi, Khetdt, 11, 710.

Quatremere, 11, 17.

" See Makrizi, Khetdt, i, 229. Lane-Poole {Hist. p. 28) gives the date as "about 732." Caussin de Perceval puts the date of the tribe's eponymous ancestor Kays at about 68 a.d. There were only four generations between him and 'Adnan (Caussin de Perceval, Vol. I, Table VIII).

' Lane-Poole, Hist. p. 48.

* El Khetdt..., ap. Abu Salih, p. no.

" See Wiistenfeld, D, where "el Qein" is read for "el ICibr."