Al Fadl (, ALA-LC: Āl Faḍl) were an Arab tribe that dominated the Syrian Desert and steppe during the Middle Ages, and whose modern-day descendants largely live in southern Syria and eastern Lebanon. The Al Fadl's progenitor, Fadl ibn Rabi'ah, was a descendant of the Banu Tayy through his ancestor, Mufarrij al-Jarrah. The tribe rose to prominence by assisting the Burids and Zengids against the Crusaders. The Ayyubids often appointed them to the office of amir al-ʿarab, giving the Al Fadl emirs (princes or lords) command over the Bedouin tribes of northern Syria. Their function was often to serve as auxiliary troops.
Starting with Emir Isa ibn Muhanna, the Al Fadl became the hereditary holders of the office by order of the Mamluk sultans and were given substantial iqtaʿat (fiefs) in Salamiyah, Palmyra and other places in the steppe. By then their tribal territory spanned the region between Homs in the west and Qal'at Ja'bar to east, and between the Euphrates valley in the north to central Arabia in the south. Isa's sons and successors Muhanna and Fadl vacillated between the Mamluks and the latter's Mongol enemies, but generally they were highly favored by Sultan an-Nasir Muhammad. During late Mamluk rule, the tribe was occupied by internal strife.
The Ottomans preserved the Al Fadl's hereditary leadership of the Bedouin tribes. By the mid-16th century, the leading emirs joined the Mawali tribe and became known as Al Abu Risha, while their rivals within the tribe were driven out towards the Beqaa Valley and continued to go by the name "Al Fadl". The Mawali dominated northern Syria until the arrival of the Annazah tribesmen in the 18th century. During that same period, the Al Fadl in Beqaa split into the Hourrouk and Fa'our branches. The latter made its home in the Golan Heights where they often fought over pasture rights with Kurdish and Turkmen settlers, and later against Druze and Circassian newcomers.
Toward the end of the 19th century, the Al Fadl became semi-sedentarized; they settled in various Golan villages, but continued to shepherd their flocks, while their emir settled in Damascus and effectively became an absentee landlord who collected rent from his tribesmen. The Al Fadl were displaced from their homes in the Hula Valley and Golan during the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars, respectively, and most settled in and around Damascus. As a result of the wars and Syrian agrarian reforms that stripped the emir of much of his land, his relationship with the tribe shifted from benevolent landlord to symbolic leader and political representative. By the 1990s, there were up to 30,000 Al Fadl tribesmen in Syria (not counting those who were affiliated with the Mawali) along with a significant population in eastern Lebanon.
History
Origins
The Al Fadl were one of the two main branches (the other being Al Mira) of the Banu Rabi'ah, a tribe belonging to the Banu Tayy (also known as the Tayyids).Amitai-Preiss 1995, p. 64. The Banu Rabi'ah were the offspring of the tribe's namesake, Rabi'ah ibn Hazim ibn Ali ibn Mufarrij ibn Daghfal ibn al-Jarrah.Hiyyari, p. 513. The Banu Rabi'ah were descendants of the 10th-century Jarrahid rulers of Palestine, and became prominent in Syria as a result of their participation in the Muslim war effort against the Crusaders, who conquered the Syrian (Levantine) coastal regions in 1099. The Banu Rabi'ah's branches Al Fadl and Al Mira (also spelled Al Murrah) were the descendants of Rabi'ah's sons, Fadl and Mira, respectively.
Fadl was noted in Muslim chronicles as an emir (prince) of the tribe by 1107. He and his brothers Mira, Thabit and Daghfal, and their father Rabi'ah, provided and commanded mounted auxiliary troops for Tughtekin (r. 1104-1128), the Burid ruler of Damascus, and his Zengid successors. By the time the Zengids gained control of the Syrian interior in the mid-12th century, the Banu Rabi'ah had become the dominant tribe in the Syrian Desert. Relations between the tribes and the various Muslim states were not always cooperative.Hiyari 1975, p. 514. During periods of strained relations the tribes would plunder the villages of the countryside and Hajj pilgrimage caravans.
The Tayyid roots of the tribe are supported and verified by Muslim historians. However, members of the Al Fadl have claimed fictitious lineages in the past, which have been dismissed by both medieval and modern historians.Van der Steen 2010, p. 76. Among these legends was that the tribe descended from the Barmakids, a Persian household that held high office in the Abbasid government in Baghdad.Tritton 1948, p. 567. That claim was disparaged by 14th-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun. Some modern-era tribesmen have claimed descent from al-Abbas, the Abbasids' namesake and ancestor, and through him trace their lineage to the Quraysh tribe of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.Chatty 1986, p. 392. In another story, descent is claimed from Abbasa, a sister of Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid.
Ayyubid period At some point during Ayyubid rule in the late 12th century or early 13th century, the Al Fadl were driven out of Hauran in southern Syria by the Al Mira. They consequently migrated north to the steppe regions around Homs in northern Syria and were paid by the Ayyubid sultans of Egypt to ensure the safety of the roads connecting Syria with Iraq. The Al Fadl grew more powerful throughout this period due to the patronage of various Ayyubid rulers. Sultan al-Adil (r. 1200–1218) appointed Haditha, a grandson of Fadl ibn Rabi'ah, as amir al-ʿarab (commander of the Bedouin), an office denoting the chief of the Bedouin tribes that were under the jurisdiction of al-Adil and his Ayyubid kinsmen in the Damascus and Hama principalities. The jurisdiction of the amir al-ʿarab was later extended to the tribes around Aleppo by that principality's Ayyubid emir, az-Zahir Ghazi, during the latter half of his reign (1186–1218). Thus, the Bedouin tribes of northern Syria were put under the authority of Haditha; until then, the Banu Kilab had unofficially served as leaders of the northern Syrian tribes in place of their Mirdasid kinsmen.Hiyari 1975, p. 515.
Following al-Adil's death in 1218, control over the office of amir al-ʿarab regularly switched between different lines of the Al Fadl and Al Faraj, the latter being another sub-tribe of the Banu Rabi'ah. Under Sultan al-Kamil, the emirate (principality) that Haditha ruled was divided between his son Maniʿ and his Al Faraj kinsman Ghannam ibn Abi Tahir ibn Ghannam following Haditha's death (sometime between 1218 and the 1220s). Ghannam was later dismissed by al-Kamil, who concurrently bestowed authority over the entire emirate to Maniʿ for his close cooperation with the Ayyubids of Egypt and Syria and his assistance in their military campaigns. Maniʿ died in 1232/33 and was succeeded by his son Muhanna after being confirmed for the post in an agreement between the respective Ayyubid emirs of Damascus and Homs, al-Ashraf Musa and al-Mujahid Shirkuh II.Hiyari 1975, p. 516.
Between Muhanna's accession and the Mamluk conquest of Syria in 1260, details about the Al Fadl/Tayyid emirate are obscure or absent in the Muslim sources. It is known that in 1240 Tahir ibn Ghannam of the Al Faraj was made amir al-ʿarab by the Ayyubid emir of Aleppo, an-Nasir Yusuf, and that sometime later Ali ibn Hadithah of the Al Fadl (Muhanna's uncle) was given the post, which he held until the Mamluks' ascent. According to historian Reuven Amitai-Preiss, it was not Ali but his son and successor Abu Bakr who was appointed amir al-ʿarab in the years just prior to the Mamluks' annexation of Syria.
Mamluk period The office of amir al-ʿarab passed to Muhanna's son Sharaf ad-Din ʿIsa, though it is not clear which Mamluk sultan bestowed the title upon him.Amitai-Preiss 1995, pp. 64–65. According to several Mamluk-era sources, Sultan Qutuz (r. 1259–1260) appointed ʿIsa in the aftermath of the Mamluk victory over the Mongols at the Battle of Ayn Jalut.Amitai-Preiss 1995, p. 65. However the 14th-century Arab historian al-ʿUmari claims Qutuz's successor Baybars made ʿIsa amir al-ʿarab. This was apparently a reward for ʿIsa's aid and friendship during Baybars' exile in Syria in the 1250s at a time when Abu Bakr's father Ali denied him refuge. Whatever the correct version, Baybars at least confirmed ʿIsa's appointment and his iqtaʿat (fiefs) in 1260/61. Abu Bakr's brother Zamil and Tahir ibn Ghannam's son Ahmad both contested ʿIsa's appointment. The latter requested a share in the emirate, but Baybars gave him a smaller emirate elsewhere in Syria instead, while Zamil revolted to gain full control of ʿIsa's emirate. Zamil was defeated by ʿIsa and the Mamluks and was imprisoned in Cairo. He was later released and a temporary peace was mediated between him, ʿIsa and other emirs of the Banu Rabi'ah. ʿIsa's strongest Bedouin opposition came from his kinsmen in the Al Mira under the leadership of Ahmad ibn Hajji, who dominated the tribes of southern Syria.Hiyari 1975, p. 517. Gradually, the enmity between the Al Fadl and the Al Mira dissipated as Ahmad was given virtual independence in the southern desert, while ʿIsa remained amir al-ʿarab.
During the Mamluk era, the Al Fadl's territory spanned the area between Homs in the west to Qal'at Ja'bar in the northeast and all along the Euphrates valley through the countryside of Basra southward to the Washm region in central Najd.Hiyari 1975, pp. 513–514. Mamluk patronage of the Al Fadl enabled them to dominate the other Bedouin tribes of the Syrian Desert.Amitai-Preiss 1995, pp. 65–66. A rival sub-branch of Al Fadl, the Al ʿAli, controlled the Ghouta region of Damascus and the northern Arabian regions of Tayma and al-Jawf, while Al Mira controlled the area of Jawlan southward to the al-Harrah hot springs in Hejaz. Other branches of the Banu Tayy controlled regions within the Banu Rabi'ah's territory. Among them were the Shammar and Banu Lam in the north Arabian mountains of Jabal Ajaʾ and Jabal Salma.
The wealth and power of the Al Fadl allowed them to reside near inhabited areas, rather than depend on pasturage in the desert. Their leaders were entrusted by Baybars and his successors with protecting Syria up to the borders with Ilkhanid-held Iraq (the Ilkhanids were Mongol enemies of the Mamluks). In exchange for protecting the Syrian frontier and aiding the Mamluks as auxiliary troops, the Al Fadl and some of their Banu Rabi'ah kin were bestowed with official assignments, iqtaʿat and gifts. While the Mamluk sultans cultivated an alliance with the Al Fadl, they generally considered the tribe to be "vacillating and untrustworthy", according to historian Janusz Bylinsky.Bylinsky 1999, p. 163. Nonetheless, the Al Fadl were the most favored Bedouin tribe in Syria and their leaders consistently held the title of amir al-ʿarab and were given official receptions by Mamluk sultans.
Toward the end of ʿIsa's reign, in 1281, Palmyra was granted to the Al Fadl as an iqtaʿ, and it became one of the tribe's principal towns and sources of income, along with Salamiyah. The Al Fadl became patrons of public works in Palmyra and played a significant role in regulating the town's affairs.Bylinsky 1999, pp. 163–164. The central mosque of Palmyra contains inscriptions either attributing the Al Fadl with the mosque's construction or other works in Palmyra. A mosque built at the town's periphery has been attributed to the Al Fadl, and was likely constructed for use by the Bedouin as opposed to the settled population in the town itself.