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| Banu Hanifa بنو حنيفة | |
|---|---|
| Rabi'aite Arab tribe | |
| Nisba | Al-Hanafi |
| Location | Arabia |
| Descended from | Hanifa bin Lujaim bin Saab bin Ali binBakr bin Wael |
| Parent tribe | Banu Bakr |
| Branches |
|
| Religion | Christianity (pre-630) Islam (post 630) |
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Banu Hanifa (Arabic:بنو حنيفة) is an ancientArab tribe inhabiting the area ofal-Yamama in the central region of modern-daySaudi Arabia.[1] The tribe belongs to the greatRabi'ah branch ofNorth Arabian tribes, which also includedAbdul Qays,Taghlib, al-Nammir ibn Qasit, andAnazzah. Though counted by the classicalArab genealogists as aChristian[2][3] branch ofBani Bakr, they led an independent existence prior toIslam.[4] The rulingHouse of Saud ofSaudi Arabia belongs to it.[5]
The tribe's members appear to have been mostly sedentary farmers at the dawn ofIslam, living in small settlements along thewadis of easternNejd (known back then asal-Yamama), particularly the valley of Al-'Irdh, which later came to bear their name (seeWadi Hanifa). Sources such asYaqut's 13th century encyclopedia credit them with the founding of the towns of Hadjr (the predecessor of today'sRiyadh) andManfuha, and being responsible for the granaries ofAl-Kharj. According to legend, the tribe had moved to al-Yamamah from theHejaz after the region's original inhabitants, the extinct people ofTasm and Jadis were decimated by war.
During Muhammad's era the Banu Hanifa tribe were involved in military conflict with him. Muhammad ordered theExpedition of Muhammad ibn Maslamah in July, 627 AD inMuharram, 6AH.[6][7]
A platoon of thirty Muslims under the leadership of Muhammad bin Maslamah was despatched on a military mission. It headed for the habitation ofBanu Bakr sept. The Muslims attacked that sept and dispersed them in all directions. Plenty of spoils (war booty) were captured and the Muslims returned with the chief of the tribe of Banu Hanifa, called Thumamah bin Uthal Al-Hanafi.[8]
Muhammad's companions tied him to a pole of a mosque. To a question posed by Muhammad, Thumamah used to say: "If you were to kill someone, then you would have to choose one of noble descent, if you were to be gracious, then let it be to a grateful man and if you were to ask for money, you would have to ask for it from a generous man." He repeated that three times on three occasions. The third time, Muhammad ordered that he should be released and later he converted to Islam.[8]
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Banu Hanifa played an important role in earlyIslamic history. At around 632, according to the traditional Muslimchroniclers, they sent a delegation pledging allegiance to the IslamicprophetMuhammad. Among the members of the delegation wasMusaylimah, who, probably from what he then saw, conceived the idea that he might set up a claim to prophethood. The delegation, before their departure, embracedIslam and denounced Christianity without compunction.[4]
Muhammad died shortly afterwards, and the Banu Hanifa immediately renounced their new religion, under the leadership of their own self-proclaimedprophet, Musaylima. It is said, however, that Musaylima had declared his prophethood shortly before Muhammad's death, claiming to have been made a partner of Muhammad's in divine revelation. This, along with other apostasy movements in Arabia, triggered theRidda Wars, in which theMuslims ofMedina, under the leadership of the firstcaliphAbu Bakr, subjugated the rebellious tribes, but not before some heavy losses. The Muslims of Medina were only able to defeat Banu Hanifa on the third attempt, killing Musaylima in the battle of 'Aqraba, some 30 km north of modern Riyadh, and the rest of Banu Hanifa then made peace with the Muslims and rejoined the new Islamic state.
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Due to their role in the Apostasy movement, members of Banu Hanifa were initially banned from participating in the earlyMuslim conquests by the firstCaliph,Abu Bakr. The ban was lifted by Abu Bakr's successorUmar, and members of Bani Hanifa subsequently joined Muslim forces inIraq, with some settling in garrison towns such asal-Kufa.
Tribesmen from Banu Hanifa also supplied the ranks of rebellious movements such as theKharijites. One member of the tribe by the name ofNajdah ibn 'Amir, even founded a short-lived Kharijite state in the Arabian Peninsula during the Umayyad era. Thereafter the tribe seems to have resumed its pre-Islamic agricultural way of life, leading the famousUmayyad-era poetJarir ibn Atiya to mock them in scathing satirical verse for choosing the "humble" life of the farmer over the "glorious" life of the Arab nomad, and accusing them of cowardice and incompetence in battle. Others such as the 8th century literary critical-Jahiz, however, express admiration for their military prowess, surrounded as they were by hostile tribes from every direction. Al-Jahiz, however, also notes with curiosity that the tribe produced almost no poets of any repute after conversion to Islam. The tribes smallpastoralistbedouin section, mentioned only fleetingly by Muslim sources, appears to have joined the rest of the bedouins of Bakr and 'Annizah in northern Arabia and southernIraq, at some point after Islam according toal-Tabari.
Perhaps due to the legacy of the Ridda Wars and Najdah's Kharijites, theUmayyads andAbbasids made sure never to appoint a member of the tribe to governorship in their native province of Yamamah. In the mid 9th century, theAlid dynasty ofBanul Ukhaidhir (c. 867) came to power in al-Yamama, having fled there from their nativeMecca. According to Yaqut and others, Ukhaidhirite rule was harsh on Bani Hanifa, leading many of them to leave forBasra in Iraq, and toUpper Egypt, where sources such asal-Yaqubi of the 9th century state that Bani Hanifa formed the majority of the population of the valley ofWadi al-Allaqi, nearAswan, having moved there earlier with their women and children. There they worked ingold mining, and according to Yaqut, the "sultan of al-Allaqi" was a man of Bani Hanifa.
Geographers such asAl-Hamadani of the 10th century andYaqut of the 13th seem to indicate that Bani Hanifa still resided in its ancestral lands at the time of their writings, though the tribe seems to have held little political power by then, and many of their old settlements had been taken over by other tribes, such asBani Tamim andBani 'Amir. Yaqut, however, reports that they still formed the majority in al-Yamama's provincial capital, Hadjr, though he could have been reporting from an earlier source.
In the 14th century, however,Ibn Batuta relating his visit to Hadjr, also stated that most of its inhabitants are from Banu Hanifa, and even joined theiremir, one Tufail ibn Ghanim, on a pilgrimage toMecca.[citation needed] Little else is heard from Banu Hanifa thereafter, except that a number of clans in the region ofWadi Hanifa are given a Hanafite lineage by Jabr ibn Sayyar, the ruler of nearby Al-Qassab, in his short 17th-century manuscript on the genealogies of the people ofNejd.[citation needed]
According toKing Salman Al Saud ofSaudi Arabia,[9] Banu Hanifa had assimilated into its larger cousin tribeAnizah, socially and politically. Tribes merging and assimilating through alliances and intermarriage was a common phenomenon.
