Quraysh

Quraysh, the tribe of Mecca in Muhammad's mission-time — keepers of the Ka'ba and owners of its trade — whose leadership was the call's fiercest enemy in its early years, then became, after the conquest, the new state's twin.

Quraysh trace themselves to al-Nadr ibn Kinana and branch into clans — Hashim, Umayya, Makhzum, Zuhra and others — sharing the honour of the House's charge and the pilgrims' watering ¹. The Sira has preserved the picture of the class that monopolised Meccan decision: its chiefs — like Abu Jahl and Abu Lahab — opposed the call of their kinsman Muhammad, and boycotted Banu Hashim in the shi'b for three years ².

After the battles of Badr, Uhud and the Trench and the knot of al-Hudaybiyya, Mecca was entered in 630 CE with hardly a fight, and its leaders became Muslim — from Abu Sufyan to Ikrima ibn Abi Jahl — and the relation changed: Quraysh became the pillar of army and administration in the Rashidun and Umayyad eras ³.

"The caliphate belongs to Quraysh" — a saying the tradition transmits from the Saqifa context — consecrated the tribe's centrality in Islamic political imagination; historians outside the tradition see in it a later legitimisation of a social superiority already existing ⁴.