Kinana

History

In the Arab genealogical tradition, the eponymous ancestor of the tribe was Kinana, a son of Khuzaymah ibn Mudrikah. The tribe traced its ancestry to Ishmael, who married a woman of the Yemenite Jurhum tribe and settled in the vicinity of Mecca according to Islamic tradition. The Kinana were polytheists, with their worship centering on the goddess al-Uzza. Islamic tradition holds that the Kinana and the other descendants of Ishmael gradually dispersed throughout northern Arabia, losing their original faith and falling into idolatry. There were six principal branches of the tribe, namely the Nadr, Malik, Milkan, Amir, Amr and Abd Manat groups. The Nadr were the parent tribe of the Quraysh, the tribe of the Islamic prophet Muhammad which were counted independently of the Kinana. The Abd Manat included the particularly strong subgroup of Bakr ibn Abd Manat, whose main branches were the Mudlij, Du'il, Layth and Damra. The Ghifar subgroup belonged to the Damra or directly stemmed from Abd Manat. Another branch, the Harith ibn Abd Manat, formed the core of the Ahabish group, a collection of small, most likely unrelated, clans. The ancestor of the Quraysh, Fihr ibn Malik ibn Nadr, emerged as the leader of the Kinana at unknown date in their victory against a branch of the Himyarites of South Arabia. His descendant, Qusayy ibn Kilab, was backed by the Kinana in his capture of the sanctuary town of Mecca, home to the Kaaba. Qusayy's position among the tribesmen was further bolstered by the support of the Kinani chief Ya'mar ibn Amr of the Layth group; the Bakr generally opposed Qusayy. The Fijar War was precipitated by the killing of a chief of the Banu Kilab by the Kinani al-Barrad ibn Qays, who was a man of the Damra exiled by his tribe but given protection by the Du'il and…