Bāhila

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Bāhila ( Arabic باهلة) is the name of an Arab tribe whose main settlement area in pre-Islamic times was on the road between Mecca and the Najd . The Bāhila belong to the tribal association of the Qais ʿAilān, who belong to the north Arab tribal group of the Mudar.

genealogy

The tribe is named after a certain Bāhila bint Saʿb from the Ma dh hij tribe, who was initially married to Mālik ibn Aʿsur and after his death was passed on to her stepson Maʿn ibn Mālik. The passing on of wives to the sons of the deceased man as part of the inheritance was not uncommon in pre-Islamic Arabia and was only forbidden by the Koran in Sura 4:22. According to the Arabic genealogy, Mālik ibn Aʿsur was a great-grandson of Qais ʿAilān. Together with Mālik, Bāhila had a son named Saʿdmanāt, together with his son Maʿn two children named Ji'āwa and Aud. In addition to these children, all sons that man fathered with other wives, and their descendants, are counted among the Bāhila because they were raised by Bāhila bint Saʿb.

A subgroup of the Bāhila, the Banū Umāma, were the guardians of the sanctuary of Dhū l-Chalasa in pre-Islamic times . Well-known personalities of the tribe in pre-Islamic times were the warrior al-Muntashir and the poet Aschā Bāhila. The Bāhila were closely related to the Ghanī tribe, who had their main settlement area north of the Bāhila. The Ghanī are considered to be descendants of Mālik's brother ʿAmr. Taken together, Bāhila and Ghanī were also referred to as the "two sons of Duchān" ( ibnā Duḫān ).

Role in Islamic times

After Mohammed had conquered Mecca in 630 , two delegations from the Bāhila met him in Medina and accepted Islam on behalf of their respective groups . One group, represented by Mutarrif ibn al-Kāhin, received a security guarantee ( amān ) in return for the assurance that they would pay a certain proportion of their grazing animals as a fee , while the other group, represented by Nahshal ibn Mālik al-Wāʾilī, had paying the zakat was waived tithing.

With the first Islamic conquest, there was the first emigration from Bāhila to northern Syria and Basra . Since the Bāhila were known for their hostility to ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib and did not want to fight against the Syrian army of Muʿāwiyas , Mu habenāwiyas is said to have sent them on conquest campaigns to Dailam before the events in Siffīn . Al-Minqarī quotes ʿAlī in his work on the Battle of Siffīn as saying: “I call on God as a witness. You hate me and I hate you. So take your pay and go the Daylamites fight. "The Shiites also deliver that Bāhila and Ghani in addressing'Alīs with the Kharijites prayers saying that they may triumph over him. When Hāni ibn Haudha, ʿAlī's representative in Kufa , informed him of this, ʿAlī is said to have asked him to drive them out of the city and not to leave any of them behind.

Of the various clans that belonged to the Bāhila tribe, those who traced back to Maʿn's sons Qutaiba and Wāʾil were numerically the most important in the first Islamic centuries. The famous Bāhilites of this time include Qutaiba ibn Muslim , the conqueror of Transoxania , who belonged to the Qutaiba, and the philologist al-Asmaʿī (740-828), who belonged to the Wāʾil. In the early 9th century there was a second wave of emigration from Bāhila from their former settlement area to the marshland ( baṭāʾiḥ ) of the lower Euphrates north of Basra. Here they were drawn into the Zanj uprising in 871 .

Negative judgments about the bāhila

Al-Asmaʿī allegedly denied belonging to the Bāhila, arguing that Bāhila was not the real mother of her stepson Qutaiba. The fact that al-Asmaʿī wanted nothing to do with the Bāhila was not an isolated incident. As the Arab biographer as-Samʿānī reports in his "Book of Belongings" ( Kitāb al-Ansāb ), the Arabs generally disdained belonging to this tribe because it was regarded as not very noble. Until the Abbasid period, the Arab poets poured out their scorn on this tribe. A well-known verse reads in the translation: "If you call out to a dog: 'You Bâhilite', - he howls at the shame you have done to him." Above all, the greed of the Bāhila was proverbial. A mocking verse quoted by as-Samʿāni reads: "What is the use of descent from the Hashim if the Nafs is from Bāhila?"

The modern Twelve Shiite scholar Muhsin al-Muʿallim (born 1952) from Saudi Arabia attributes the Bāhila to the so-called Nawāsib because of their behavior during the first civil war, groups of people who are characterized by their particular hatred of ʿAlī and are therefore special to be considered hostile to schia .

literature

  • W. Caskel: Art. "Bāhila" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. I, pp. 920b-921a.
  • Werner Caskel: Ǧamharat an-nasab: the genealogical work of Hišām Ibn Muḥammad al-Kalbī . 2 vols. Brill, Leiden, 1966. Plate 137.
  • Ibn Ḥazm : Ǧamharat ansāb al-ʿArab . Ed. ʿAbd as-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. Dār al-maʿārif bi-Miṣr, Cairo, 1962. pp. 244–247.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Ibn Ḥazm 245.
  2. ↑ Cf. Leone Caetani : Annali dell'Islam . Vol. II / 1. Milano 1907. pp. 221-223. Digitized
  3. ↑ See Wilferd Madelung: The Succession to Muḥammad. A Study of the Early Caliphate . Cambridge 1997. p. 218.
  4. ↑ See Muḥsin al-Muʿallim: an-Nuṣb wa-n-nawāṣib . Dār al-Hādī, Beirut, 1997. p. 256.
  5. ↑ See Caskel EI² 921a.
  6. ↑ Cf. Ibn Ḥazm 245f.
  7. ↑ Cf. as-Samʿānī: Kitāb al-Ansāb. Vol. II, p. 67, lines 2-3 .
  8. ↑ Quoted from Ignaz Goldziher: Muhammedanische Studien . Max Niemeyer, Halle aS, 1889. p. 49.
  9. ↑ Cf. as-Samʿānī: Kitāb al-Ansāb. Vol. II, p. 67, line 4 .
  10. ↑ See Muḥsin al-Muʿallim: an-Nuṣb wa-n-nawāṣib . Dār al-Hādī, Beirut, 1997. pp. 256f.