II. 1. XV. IN THE MIDDLE AGES 149
into the Bega country to the east^. The lures to them were the
emerald and gold mines: the spur was the oppression of the tax-
gatherer on the Nile. In these early days the chief of the Rabi'a was
Ishak ibn Beshr, but before long a split occurred and the Beni Yunis
section who had taken up their abode at 'Aidhab embroiled them-
selves with the Beni Beshr^ section and were forced to retire to the
Hegaz. Then the Beni Beshr quarrelled among themselves, Ishak was killed and his cousin Abu 'Abdulla Muhammad "Abu Zayd"
succeeded him. "Abu Zayd" had lived at Balbays, but, on being
chosen to lead the tribe, he took up his headquarters at Aswan.
Meanwhile considerable cordiality had arisen between the Rabi'a and the Bega in the east and also between the other Rabi'a and the Nubians on the Nile.
The Bega chieftains gave their daughters to the Rabi'a in marriage and helped them to eject from the islands of the Red Sea the other Arabs who had settled there earlier. As a result the Bega, who had been distinctly inferior in strength to the Nubians, became in alliance
with the Rabi'a more than a match for both the riverain tribes and such Kahtanite Arabs as had succeeded in establishing themselves
in the eastern deserts. By 943-4, Mas'udi relates^, Bashir ibn Marwan ibn Ishak (or "Abu Marwan Bishr") of the Beni Rabi'a had under his sheikhship 3000 tribesmen of Rabi'a and Mudr and
the Yemen and 30,000 Bega warriors. These latter were all Hadareb,
dwellers on the coast and converts to Islam.
The Rabi'a who had remained round Aswan* and never moved
eastwards similarly imposed their influence on the natives and founded
a modified Arab aristocracy ruling by consent over a less virile, though still unsubjected, population of autochthons. About 1020,
or rather earlier, their chief, Abu Mukarram, son and successor of Abu 'Abdulla Muhammad "Abu Zayd," was invested by the Fatimite
Khalifa Hakim with the hereditary title of Kanz el Dowla as a reward
for having defeated and taken prisoner (in 1006) the rebel Abu Rakwa^. By the end of the next century, and probably sooner, the
^ See Makrfzi, Khetdt, ii, 569 and 575. The Rabi'a had been employed in Nubia on a punitive expedition (see p. 166).
^ Possibly the name Bishdrin is connected with the name of this section.
* See Mas'udi, in, 33. Bouriant (11, 570) hopelessly mistranslates the last part of Mal:rfzi's quotation from Mas'udi. The Arabic is as follows:
etc. O-^'j j-iuo ^^ Lji'^l*^!^
* See Mas'adi (ap. Makrfzi, Khetdt, 11, 572) ; Abu Salih, p. 276 ; Quatremere, 11,
84, etc.
^ Quatremfere, n, 85. Cp. Beckett, p. 196.