II. 1. XII. IN THE MIDDLE AGES 143

Ibn el Habhab at first collected one hundred families of Kays:

these were given lands near Balbays on the south-east side of the

Delta and bought camels and horses and engaged in the transport

trade between the sea-coast and the interior so successfully that the news of their prosperity led five hundred more families of Kays to

immigrate and join them. This process continued, and within a year

of the original immigration there were fifteen hundred families of

the tribe, chiefly members of the great Beni Sulaym branch, settled round Balbays. By 750 a.d. the number had been doubled.

They soon turned their hand to brigandage and in 779 had to be

severely repressed by the governor Ibn Mamdud^.

In the first half of the next century they revolted every few

years^. Makrizi speaks of a rebellion in the Hauf in 802 caused by

the oppressive land tax, and the identity of the rebels is indicated by

the fact that "twenty-four heads of Kaysite chiefs" were sent to

el Fostat by the government representative.

In 807 a similar rising took place and was suppressed by the

treacherous seizure of the chief sheikhs in the Hauf, who, it is specified, were originally Yemenites and Beni Kays.

Twenty-two years later the same causes led again to the same

result, and all the Hauf and most of the rest of the Delta rose in arms

:

it was only after a year of fighting, in which the rebels had distinctly

the advantage, that some sort of order was restored. Even so, in 83 1

,

the whole of Lower Egypt, and not merely the Beni Kays and their

neighbours, was in revolt.

The result of these insurrections was certainly not to weaken the power of the Beni Kays, for they remained sufficiently powerful to be recognized as the protagonists of the Isma'ilitic tribes against the

rival Yemenites or Kahtanites in Egypt ^, and when Harun el Rashi'd

died in 808 and both of his sons claimed the Khalifate, one of them

astutely nominated the chief of the Beni Kays to be Governor of Egypt and owed his success there entirely to this manoeuvre. The opponents of the Beni Kays on this occasion were chiefly Lakhm and GuDHAM^.

In Makrizi 's day the term Kays was used practically to denote

not only the descendants of Kays 'Aylan but also those of his grand-

father Mudr and of the latter 's father Nizar^.

^ Lane-Poole, Hist. p. 33.

^ Makrizi, Khetdt, i, 230-232.

' Makrizi, ap. Quatremere, 11, 497.

* Makrizi, Khetdt, n, 50S, 509. Cp. Lane-Poole, Hist. p. 35.

* The badge of "Kays" was a red flag: that of "Yemen" a white one (see Quatremere, loc. cit.).