User:Al Ameer son/Lam, Mafarija, Sardiyya

The Banu Lam (Banū Lām) was a Bedouin tribe that dwelt in northern Arabia in the 13th century and the southern Levant in the 14th–16th centuries.

Branches
The Banu Lam was comprised of a number of clans, including the Mafarija, who are sometimes mentioned in sources as 'Banu Lam Mafarija'. The Mafarija was subdivided into a four branches, each of was comprised of several clans. Among the four branches were the Sardiyya (also called Suradiyya).

Territory
The Banu Lam were a branch of the Banu Tayy tribe of northern Arabia and the Fertile Crescent. In the 13th century, they dwelt in the highlands of Jabal Aja and Jabal Salma (collectively referred to as Jabal Shammar) in northern Najd. Other branches of the Tayy, such as the Al Fadl, dominated the Syrian desert and steppe, including the northern Hejaz (western Arabia) and Transjordan. The Banu Lam later migrated to the northern Hejaz, and eventually to southern Transjordan. By the late 15th century, they were the dominant tribe in this region, specifically the environs of al-Karak and the Balqa plateau. They were replaced in this role by the Banu Sakhr during the 16th century.

Mamluk period
The Banu Lam are frequently referenced in the Mamluk-era (1260–1517) sources "because of their constant attacks" on the Hajj pilgrim caravans to and from Mecca, according to the historian David Ayalon. The tribe inhabited an "inhospitable terrain" and "eked out an existence marginal even by Bedouin standards", in the words of the historian Carl Petry. He posits that the Banu Lam's poverty drove "their perennial raiding".

The Banu Lam were recorded by the Syrian geographer Abu al-Fida to have attacked a caravan of Muslim pilgrims around the Karak fortress on their return from the Hajj in 1314. The Damascene notary Ibn Tawq, reporting during the years 1480–1500, recorded numerous attacks by the Banu Lam–Mafarija, sometimes backed by tribes from Jabal Nablus, against the villages of the Hauran, causing the flight of peasants from the region. During the reign of Sultan al-Ghawri ((r. 1501 – 1516)), the Banu Lam were the most unruly of the Bedouin tribes in realm, frequently raiding Palestine between 1506 and 1515.

Ottoman period
A chief of the Mafarija, called Nasrallah, is recorded in Ottoman records as having been a rebel who sold bows and arrows in 1552. He was pardoned by the governor of Damascus after surrendering. The Ottoman government later ordered the governor to arrest Nasrallah for arms possession. Two years later Nasrallah and Salama ibn Na'im, the chief of the Mafarija's Sardiyya faction, opposed the appointment of Qansuh al-Ghazzawi, the Ottoman governor of Ajlun and Karak-Shawbak (northern and southern Transjordan, respectively), to the post of amir al-hajj (commander of the Hajj caravan]]). In response, the Ottomans appointed Salama's close kinsman Uqab to the post. This raised opposition by other factions of the Mafarija and other Bedouin tribes, who feared the empowerment of the Sardiyya and rallied behind Qansuh. Ultimately, the governor of Gaza, Ridwan Pasha, was appointed and Salama was compensated with the mashaykha (chieftainship) of the Hawran. In 1576, Qansuh, with assistance from the Ottoman district governors in Palestine, suppressed the Mafarija in southern Transjordan who had been rebelling against the state. Between 1586 and 1590, the Mafarija chief Amr ibn Jabr allied with Qansuh and defeated the Turkish governor of Ajlun, Abu Sayfayn, and then attacked the Sardiyya chief Salama, who was with Amr over the mashaykha of the Hawran.

Sardiyya
The Sardiyya had the lucrative rights to protect the annual caravan of Muslim pilgrims heading for Mecca to perform the Hajj. They were responsible for the territory of the northern part of the desert and they mainly had to protect the caravans from raids by other Bedouin tribes. When the Beni Sakhr arrived in the region around the 17th century, they frequently attacked the caravans to provoke the Sardiyya, and ultimately the Sakhr gained the protection rights to the detriment of the Sardiyya.

In 1714, the chief of the Sardiyya, Kulayb, who held the posts of shaykh al-arab bilad al-Sham (chief of the Arabs of Syria) and shaykh al-bilad al-Hawraniyya (chief of the Hauran), was killed in a campaign against the Bedouin by the governor of Damascus, Nasuh Pasha.

During the Emirate period in Transjordan (1921–1948), the Sardiyya were largely based in Syria but crossed into Transjordan during the summer and often clashed with tribes there over water and grazing for their livestock. Part of the tribe settled in northern Transjordan, east of the Hejaz Railway line beginning in 1939 and throughout in the 1940s after the government granted them lands there to encourage settlement and cultivation; thereafter they became citizens of the Emirate, which became the Kingdom of Jordan in 1948.