Banu Asad

Banu Asad, also Beni Sed in dialect, was an Arab tribe related to Kinana. Its homelands were in North Arabia at the foot of the mountains once held by Tayy, but unlike Tayy the Asad lived mainly as nomads. Their grazing lands ran south and south-east of the Nefud, from the Shammar mountains to the Wadi al-Rumma, and beyond it near the two Aban towards Rass and east to Sirr; they overlapped with the 'Abs, and to the north with the Yarbu' of Tamim, since the Asad owned the spring of Line beyond the Dahna' and the tract of Hazn to the north. ¹

The Asad revolt in which Hudir fell, son of the last great ruler of Kinda and father of the poet Imru' al-Qays, dealt a mortal blow to the disintegrating kingdom of Kinda. Their relations with their neighbours, the Tamim and the tribes beyond the Wadi, varied. The entry dates a lasting alliance with Tayy and Ghatafan, joined by Dhubyan and finally 'Abs, to the late fourth century AD; the date looks like a misprint for the sixth century, and it is recorded here as printed. A few decades later the allies fell out, and clashes followed, especially between Asad and Tayy, until Islam brought peace among the tribes. ¹

A branch of the tribe, the Ghanm, long settled in Mecca, belonged to Muhammad's inner circle, but this did not affect the tribe as a whole. In 4 AH (625) Muhammad sent a raid against the Asad wells at Katan, where the sub-tribe Fak'as was encamped under its chief Tulayha, who was reportedly planning an attack on Medina. Tulayha may have taken part in the siege of Medina in 6 AH (627). When famine struck the Asad after further failed struggles, Tulayha came with other chiefs to Medina in 9 AH (630) to embrace Islam; Sura 49:14-17 may refer to their envoys, though this is uncertain. Tulayha is said to have proclaimed himself a prophet before Muhammad's death. In the Ridda wars he re-established the alliance with Ghatafan, Tayy, and sections of 'Abs and Fazara, but was abandoned by the leader of the Fazara at Buzakha against Khalid ibn al-Walid (may God be pleased with him), and fled in 11 AH (632). That victory broke the resistance of the insurgents of North Arabia, who then converted to Islam. Tulayha later returned to Islam and fought in Iraq and Persia. ¹

In the wars of conquest the Asad fought mainly on the Iraq front. Most of them were absorbed into al-Kufa, where they gradually turned from warriors into men of learning; many transmitters of the Shia tradition were Asad from Kufa. Smaller groups entered the Syrian army and later settled near Aleppo and beyond the Euphrates. When the withdrawal of Bakr and Tamim left the north open, in the second half of the third/ninth century the Asad extended their grazing along the Kufa pilgrim road from al-Bitan in the Dahna' to Waqisa, and later north to al-Qadisiyya on the frontier of the Sawad; eastward they reached Basra and westward 'Ayn al-Tamr. ¹

In the second half of the fourth/tenth century the Asad moved into the settled lands. Shaykh Mazyad of the sub-tribe Nashira settled on the Nil canal at al-Hilla, and another chief, Dubays, crossed the Tigris to camp near the later Huwayza. Troubles under the Buyids favoured the rise of the Banu Mazyad. 'Ali ibn Mazyad was confirmed as a Buyid vassal in 403 AH (1012-1013); his son Dubays and his grandson Mansur were the ideal type of Arab aristocracy, but Sadaqa ibn Mansur (479-501 AH, 1086-1108) surpassed both in nobility and political weight. He sided with Muhammad ibn Malikshah in the struggle with his brother Barkiyaruk, occupied al-Kufa in 494 AH (1101), Hit, Wasit, Basra and Takrit, and called himself Malik al-'Arab. He later quarrelled with his overlord, Sultan Muhammad, who defeated him, and he fell in 501 AH (1108). Sadaqa moved his residence to al-Hilla in 495 AH (1101-1102). His son Dubays II, who led a restless life, was murdered at the court of Maragha in 529 AH (1135), and his sons ruled al-Hilla until 545 AH (1150). ¹

The Asad had followed the Banu Mazyad to al-Hilla and stayed after the princely family died out. They had supported Sultan Muhammad II ibn Mahmud in his Saljuq campaign in Iraq, including the unsuccessful siege of Baghdad in 551 AH (1157), and in 558 AH (1163) the caliph, with the help of the Muntafiq, decided to expel them from al-Hilla. They entrenched themselves in the neighbourhood, were finally compelled to submit, and four of them were executed and the rest banished from al-Hilla for ever. The entry notes that the Asad belonged to the Shia. The tribe then dispersed, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it lived south-east of Wasit. It later settled at al-Jazair, where the Banu Asad (Beni Sed) are attested by the tenth/sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century the territory round al-Chebaish became too narrow; in the 1840s the tribe advanced under a shaykh as far as the region east of 'Amara and, under his son Kheyun, to Little Medier. In 1894-5 Turkish troops punished the Asad for setting fire to a place called Medina, below al-Chebaish on the Euphrates, under Hasan al-Kheyun, who was driven out of al-Chebaish and died in destitution at al-Jazair about 1903. His son Salim was appointed shaykh of the Beni Asad in 1906 through the influence of the family of Sayyid Talib; after the First World War he stayed loyal to Sayyid Talib and opposed the choice of Faysal as king of Iraq. In 1924-5 he revolted, was captured and exiled from his home; he later lived on his estates at Beledruz, north-east of Baghdad. ¹