38

The ‘Uqaylids

c. 380–564/c. 990–1169

Iraq, Jazīra and northern Syria

1. The line in Jazīrat Ibn ‘Umar, Nisībīn and Balad of Muhammad

b. al-Musayyab al-‘Uqaylī

2. The line in Mosul and later in Jazīrat Ibn ‘Umar, Nisībīn and Balad,

also of the al-Musayyab line

3. The line in Takrīt of Ma‘n b. al-Muqallad’s descendants

4. The line in Hit

5. The line in ‘Ukbarā of Ma‘n b. al-Muqallad’s descendants

6. The other minor branches at Āna and al-Hadītha and at Qal‘at Ja‘bar (for details, see Lane Poole and Zambaur, he. cit.)

The ‘Uqaylids came from the great North Arab Bedouin tribal group of ‘Āmir b. Sa‘sa‘a, which also included the Khafāja of the Iraq desert fringes and the Muntafiq of the Batā’ih or marshlands of lower Iraq. With the decay of the last Hamdānids of Mosul (see above, no. 35, 1), the town passed to the ‘Uqaylid Muhammad b. al-Musayyab, who held it as a nominal vassal of the Būyid amīr Bahā’ al-Dawla. After Muhammad’s death, there were internecine struggles for power among his sons, but control over Mosul and the other ‘Uqaylid towns and fortresses in Jazīra eventually came to his nephew Qirwāsh b. al-Muqallad. At a time when Būyid influence in Iraq was weakening, Qirwāsh’s main problem was to preserve intact his dominions in face of the new threat from the Turkmen invaders of western Persia and Iraq during the third and fourth decades of the eleventh century, and this work of defence necessitated alliances with another threatened power in Iraq, the Mazyadids of Hilla (see above, no. 36).

Under Qirwāsh’s great-nephew Muslim b. Quraysh, the ‘Uqaylid dominions reached their greatest extent and stretched almost from Baghdad as far as Aleppo. As a Shī‘ī, Muslim’s natural inclination was to support the Fātimids against the strongly Sunnī Seljuqs, but he allied with the Seljuq sultans Alp Arslan and Malik Shah in order to secure the Mirdāsid territories in northern Syria (see above, no. 28). But a further switch to the Fātimids brought Seljuq armies to Mosul, forcing Muslim to flee to Āmid and Aleppo, where he was eventually killed fighting the Seljuq rebel Sulaymān b. Qutalmïsh (478/1085). ‘Uqaylids survived in Mosul as governors on behalf of the Seljuqs until Tutush b. Alp Arslan in 486/1093 imposed on the town his own ‘Uqaylid nominee, and shortly afterwards the line there was extinguished. Other branches of the ‘Uqaylids persisted, however, as local lords in central Iraq and Diyār Mudar for several more decades, the branch at Raqqa and Qal‘at Ja‘bar lasting up to 564/1169 under a descendant of Badrān b. al-Muqallad, when Nūr al-Dīn Mahmūd b. Zangi (see below, no. 93) took over there. After the general loss of their power in Iraq, the Banū ‘Uqayl moved southwards to their former eastern Arabian pasture grounds in Hajar and Yamāma, and established there a line of the Shaykhs of the Banū ‘Usfūr.

It seems that the‘Uqaylids were not entirely a predatory Bedouin dynasty, but had introduced some features at least of the standard pattern of ‘Abbāsid administration into their land; thus it is mentioned that Muslim b. Quraysh had a postmaster or intelligence officer (sahib al-khabar) in every village of his principality. Several members of the dynasty were famed as poets. The passing of the ‘Uqaylids and the Mazyadids marks the end of a period during which Arab amirates had held power over large stretches of Iraq and Syria, maintaining themselves between the great powers of the Fātimids, the Būyids and the Seljuqs. The generally Shī‘ī sympathies of these amirates, and their strategic positions commanding the routes westwards into Diyār Bakr and Anatolia, inevitably brought them up against the expanding Sunnī Seljuqs and their Turkmen followers needing pasture land for their herds. Henceforth, political and military leadership in Iraq, Jazīra and Syria was to be almost exclusively in Turkish hands.

Lane-Poole, 116–17, with a genealogical table; Zambaur, 37, 135; Album, 21.

EI¹‘‘Okailids’ (K. V. Zetterstéen).

H. C. Kay, ‘Notes on the history of the Banu ‘Okayl’, JRAS, new series, 18 (1886), 491–526, with a genealogical table facing p. 526.