144 THE PROGRESS THROUGH EGYPT ii. i. xii.

They must, too, have largely intermarried with the Berbers in Egypt, for we have the great Luata branch of the latter about 1400 A.D.

actually calling themselves descendants of Kays 'Aylan.

Now some of the main branches of Kays had at an early date become sufficiently independent to be no longer spoken of under that denomination in common parlance.

About 563 A.D., for instance, the bloody "War of el Dahis " broke out between the Beni Fezara and the Beni 'Abs, both independent sections of the Ghatafan branch.

XIII FezAra. These Fezara in the Prophet's day were to all intents an independent tribe and lived near Mekka. They and the Beni 'Abs submitted to Islam in 629, but revolted for a time against Abu Bukr in 632.

From el Nuwayry we learn that some Ghatafan and Fezara took part with Guhayna and others in the expedition which 'Abdulla ibn Sa'ad made to the west of Egypt in 647.

This would not be compatible with the statement of Makrizi that there were no Kays in Egypt till 727 a.d. were it not assumed that the Fezara had become so independent that their Kaysite origin had been forgotten.

Subsequently, other Fezara accompanied the Beni Hilal when the latter entered Egypt in the eleventh century, and the remarks of Idn'si in 1154 and of Ibn Sa'id a century later lead one to think that this or an earlier group of Fezara coalesced with the Berbers to such a degree as hardly to be distinguishable from them.

Other Fezara remained in Egypt. Makrizi speaks of them as settled in Upper Egypt, Kaliub Province and Cairo '. Even more of Quatremere, II, 207.

It lasted till 608 a.d.: see Caussin de Perceval, 11, 429 and 499; Abu el Fidd, pp. 140 et seq. ; Van Dyck, p. 38 ; and Wiistenfeld, H. The war arose out of a horserace in which foul play took place.

' Caussin de Perceval, iii, 218, 345, 362.

* Ap. Ibn Khaldun, i, 313-447. See also MSS. A 11, liv, and D 6, xiii in Part IV, from which it seems some of them may have accompanied 'Abdulla ibn Sa'ad's expedition of 641-642.

** Caussin de Perceval (Table X b) puts the date of the eponymous ancestor of the Fezara at about 300 A.D. There are three generations between him and Ghatafdn the grandson of I<ays.

* Ibn Sa'fd {q.v. ap. Ibn Khaldun, pp. 9-1 1) says: "Among the descendants of Ghatafan there are at Barka the Hayb, the Rudha, and the Fezdra." Idrfsi (p. 290, ap.CaTette,Recherches...,pp. i26ff.) speaksof the territories of Old Ptolemais as inhabited by Zendta and Fezdra, and alludes to them as Berber tribes arabicized. The Zendta were of course Berbers. Some Fezdra remained in North Africa and preserved their tribal integrity: M. Carette (loc. cit. p. 445) mentions them in 1853 as among the tribes in the province of Constantine.

' Quatremere, 11, 207. There are still Fezdra in Egypt (Klippel, p. 9; and cp.

Sir C. Wilson, p. 4).