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The Jarrahids () were an Arab dynasty that intermittently ruled Palestine and controlled Transjordan and Jabal Shammar in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. They were the ruling family of the Tayy tribe, one of the three powerful tribes of Bilad al-Sham at the time; the other two were Banu Kalb and Banu Kilab.
The Jarrahids first emerged in the Muslim sources as allies of the Qarmatians, and grew prominent under their chieftain Mufarrij ibn Daghfal ibn al-Jarrah. In 973, the latter secured the governorship of Palestine, with Ramla at its center, from the Fatimid Caliphate in reward for military services. Mufarrij lost favor with the Fatimids, who drove the Jarrahids out of Palestine when they plundered Ramla in 981. Afterward, the Jarrahids raided Mecca-bound Hajj pilgrim caravans and vacillated between the Fatimids, Byzantines and individual Muslim rulers in Syria. By 1011–12, the Jarrahids controlled all of interior Palestine up to Tiberias and defied the Fatimids by declaring their own caliph, al-Hasan ibn Ja'far, at Ramla. The Fatimid caliph al-Hakim then paid Mufarrij to end the rebellion, but not long after dispatched an expedition against the Jarrahids in which they were driven from Palestine.
Mufarrij died in 1013 and was succeeded by his son Hassan, who regained control of Palestine. He entered the Tayy into an alliance with Kalb and Kilab, which dominated Syria until its defeat by the Fatimids in 1029. As a result, the Jarrahids moved their encampments close to their Byzantine Empire allies near Antioch. They fought alongside the Byzantines in several confrontations with regional Muslim powers. After 1041, there were only scattered mentions of the Jarrahids, namely regarding Hassan's nephews, Hazim ibn Ali and Humayd ibn Mahmud in the 1060s, and Hazim's grandson, Fadl ibn Rabi'ah, who at times was an ally of the Fatimids, Crusaders, Al-Mazeedi or the Seljuk Empire. He became the progenitor of the Al Fadl dynasty whose emirs came to dominate the Bedouin of the Syrian steppe until the 18th century.
In 979, the Fatimid general Fadl ibn Salih offered the Hamdanid dynasty emir Abu Taghlib control of Ramla in place of the Jarrahids; by doing this, Fadl sought to stifle a brewing alliance between the main regional Arab powers at the time, the Jarrahids, Hamdanids and Banu Uqayl.Gil 1997, pp. 354–355. Abu Taghlib and his Uqaylid allies attacked Ramla in August, but were defeated and captured on 29 August by the Jarrahids, who by then regained Fadl's support.Gil 1997, p. 355. The latter requested Mufarrij hand over Abu Taghlib to Caliph al-Aziz, but fearing Abu Taghlib could be potentially used by the Fatimids against him, Mufarrij killed him and sent his head to the caliph instead. Mufarrij's execution of Abu Taghlib spelled the official end of the Hamdanids of Mosul.
Fadl soon after turned against Mufarrij, but was recalled to Cairo by Caliph al-Aziz, essentially leaving the Jarrahids as the virtual rulers of Palestine. Between 979 and 980, the Jarrahids plundered and laid waste to al-Ramla and the countryside of Palestine, prompting a Fatimid expedition against them in 981. That year, the Jarrahids revolted against the Fatimids while their army was besieging Damascus. The Jarrahids were joined by the remnants of Abu Taghlib's army and the Arab governor of Tiberias, a certain Bishara. The Jarrahids were ultimately driven out of Palestine that year by the Fatimids and fled toward the Hejaz. In June 982, they plundered the Hajj pilgrim caravan on its return to Syria from Mecca. Another Fatimid punitive expedition was launched against them, but was routed by the Jarrahids at Ayla. Afterward, Mufarrij returned to Palestine, only to be defeated again by the Fatimids. This time, Mufarrij fled north toward Homs where he was given safe haven by the Hamdanids' Circassians governor, Bakjur, in late 982. During the next ten years, Mufarrij vacillated between the Byzantine Empire, Bakjur and the Fatimids. By 997, the Jarrahids had attempted to sack Ramla, but were forced back and fled to the Jabal Aja and Salma mountains in northern Arabia, the ancestral territory of the Tayy.
In later years, Mufarrij had his sons Ali, Hassan and Mahmud, aid the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim in his military campaigns. According to historian Marius Canard, "an opportunity occurred for Mufarrij to play a part of genuine political significance" in 1012 when the disgraced Fatimid vizier, Abu'l Qasim al-Husayn, took refuge with Mufarrij's son Hassan. Historian Hugh Kennedy asserts that this represented the "high point in the fortunes of the Jarrahid leaders".Kennedy 2004, p. 286. At that point, the Jarrahids controlled the entire interior of Palestine from the boundary with Egypt up to Tiberias. Under Hassan and Abu'l Qasim's initiative, the Jarrahids attacked and captured Yarukh, al-Hakim's appointee to the governorship of Damascus, in the vicinity of Gaza while he was on his way to Damascus. They concurrently occupied Ramla, and soon after Hassan had Yarukh killed. They further challenged al-Hakim's authority by proclaiming al-Hasan ibn Ja'far, the Sharif of Mecca, as caliph in Ramla. Al-Hakim bribed the Jarrahids to end their revolt, and afterward al-Hasan returned to Mecca, while Abu'l Qasim fled to Iraq. The Jarrahids continued to dominate Palestine and sought to entrench their rule by appealing for support among the local Christians. To that end, Mufarrij contributed to the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which al-Hakim destroyed in prior years.
In 1019, Hassan, as a representative of the Tayy, entered his tribe into an alliance with the Banu Kalb under Sinan ibn Sulayman and the Banu Kilab under Salih ibn Mirdas. Such an alliance between the three principal Arab tribes of the Levant was unprecedented and was meant to prevent outsider dominance of the Syrian desert and steppe. According to the pact's terms, the Jarrahids would rule Palestine, while the Kalb and Kilab (under the Mirdasids) would rule Damascus and Aleppo, respectively. Al-Hakim's reign ended with his mysterious death in 1021 and he was succeeded by Caliph Ali az-Zahir.
In 1023, the Fatimids installed Anushtakin al-Dizbari as the military governor of Palestine, which the Jarrahids opposed. In 1024, one of Hassan's sons and another Bedouin chieftain sacked Ayla and al-Arish, which the Fatimid central government was unable to respond to.Lev 2003, p. 47. Instead, Anushtakin took the initiative to extract taxes from Hassan's iqtaʿ at Bayt Jibrin and deprive him of the revenues, which ended with the killing of Anushtakin's soldiers.Lev 2003, pp. 48–49. This escalated the conflict with the Jarrahids, particularly after Anushtakin imprisoned two of Hassan's chief aides in Ashkelon. The Jarrahids launched an all out war in September to release their men, destroying Tiberias, besieging Ramla and freeing their men by forging release authorization documents. They forced al-Dizbari to flee Ramla, which they plundered, and gained a Fatimid concession to grant Nablus as an iqtaʿ, but not Jerusalem.
The Tayy, Kalb and Kilab renewed their alliance in 1024/25, but their appeal for support from the Byzantines was rebuffed by Emperor Basil II. Nonetheless, they overcame a Fatimid army dispatched by az-Zahir that year at Ascalon and Hassan entered Ramla. After Sinan's death, his nephew and successor defected to the Fatimids, while the Jarrahids and Mirdasids continued their rebellion. They were defeated in the Battle of al-Uqhuwana near Lake Tiberias by the Fatimids under general al-Dizbari in 1029, after which Hassan fled Palestine. The Fatimids consequently transferred the Jarrahids' iqtaʿat in Palestine to more friendly Arab tribes.Cappel 1994, p. 125.
The Jarrahids and the Byzantines struck an alliance in 1030. Hassan's envoys were received by the Byzantines in Antioch and given a cross-adorned flag to represent Hassan and a message promising them the restoration of Palestine to their tribe. The tribe also nominally embraced Christianity as part of the Jarrahid agreement with the Byzantines. A Jarrahid-Byzantine coalition was soon after defeated by the Mirdasids. Hassan rekindled his former alliance with the Kalb and together their tribesmen attacked the Fatimids in Hawran until being driven to Palmyra in the desert. Afterward, Emperor Romanus III persuaded Hassan and the Tayy to relocate their encampments to Byzantine territory near Antioch and the 20,000-strong Tayy migrated to al-Ruj in northwestern Syria. There, they faced down two Fatimid assaults at Qastun and Ennab. The Jarrahids later raided Afamiya on behalf of the Byzantines and assisted the latter with capturing the fortress of Maniqa in the Jabal Ansariya range.
The Byzantines and Fatimids entered into peace negotiations in 1032 and Hassan was present in the discussions in Constantinople. The Byzantines stipulated the restoration of Jarrahid governorship in Palestine under Fatimid suzerainty as a condition for peace, but az-Zahir refused. The Fatimids' rejection of this condition contributed to the collapse of the peace talks. The following year, the Jarrahids offered their loyalty to al-Dizbari in exchange for their former iqtaʿat in Palestine, but the attempt failed. The Fatimids and Byzantines ultimately concluded a ten-year peace treaty, without consideration of the Jarrahids' interests, in 1035.Cappel 1994, pp. 125–126. Afterward, Hassan and his son Allaf are mentioned on occasion, such as their assistance in the Byzantine defense of Edessa from the Marwanids and Numayrid dynasty in 1035/36. In 1038, the Jarrahids participated in al-Dizbari's conquest of Mirdasid-held Aleppo.Cappel 1994, p. 126. As a result, Hassan was forced into confinement in Constantinople until 1040 as a means to prevent his tribe, with its unstable allegiances, from potentially attacking Antioch. The last mention of Hassan is in 1041, by which point the Jarrahids had been permitted by the Fatimids to re-enter Palestine. Hassan's rule at the time was opposed by the Fatimid governor of Damascus.
Fadl is described in the 13th-century chronicle of Ibn al-Athir (d. 1233) as an emir, who, in 1107/08, vacillated between the Crusaders, who conquered the Levantine coast in 1099, and the Fatimids, whose rule had been limited to Egypt since 1071. This prompted Toghtekin to expel Fadl from Syria, after which he formed an alliance with Sadaqa ibn Mansur, the chieftain of the Arab Al-Mazeedi dynasty in Iraq, before defecting to the Seljuk Empire. According to Ibn al-Athir, after Fadl's entry into Anbar to block the desert route to Sadaqa "was the last that was heard of him".
They were described by historian Marius Canard (1888–1982) as a "turbulent family who were not without significance as pawns on the chess-board of Syria in the 10th–11th centuries, whom the Fatimids alternately attacked and wooed, whom the Byzantines succeeded in using, but who seem to have created for themselves, in their own best interests, a rule of duplicity, treason and pillage".Canard 1965, p. 484.
| First Jarrahid to be noted in medieval sources. |
| Son of Daghfal. Governed Palestine on behalf of the Fatimids, whom he often rebelled against and reconciled with. |
| Son of Mufarrij. Governed Palestine on behalf of Fatimids and later became an ally of the Byzantines. |
| Nephews of Hassan. Little is known of them other than their rebellion against the Fatimids. |
| Nothing is known of his activities. |
| Son of Rabi'ah. Progenitor of the Al Fadl dynasty which dominated the Bedouin of Syria until the 18th century |
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