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 taxgatherer 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 themselves 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.