The great volcanic field between Medina and Mecca was named Harrat Bani Sulaym after this tribe, whose gold mine (Ma'din Bani Sulaym) lay on the pilgrim road.
Most of the Sulaym went to Egypt and North Africa in the tenth and eleventh centuries and much of what stayed was absorbed by the Harb (Lecker), but Sulaymi clans remain round Medina. In Jumada II 590 (May-June 1194) the 'Zu'b and other Arabs' attacked Medina while the emir was in Syria and killed his brother Hashim (Ibn al-Athir); the Zu'b are a known Sulaymi clan of the Medina country.
Who holds it
- Name
- not known for 1 January 1200
- Title
- Shaykhs of the Sulaymi clans of the Hejaz (the Zu'b among them, as we read Ibn al-Athir)
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not pinned
- Family
- not pinned
- Confidence
- low
No chief of this people is named for the winter of 1199-1200 in the sources read.
What it holds
- the harras between Medina and Mecca
- the old mine country of Ma'din Bani Sulaym
How things stand that morning
Present; the feud with Medina's emirs after 1194 is not recorded as settled.
Military
Mounted tribesmen and camel riders under their shaykhs; no fortresses.
Threats
- Reprisals from Medina
Customs
Kin-ruled pastoralists under shaykhs chosen within leading lineages; summer camps at the wells and the edges of the oases, winter grazing in the open desert after the rains; they sell camels, sheep, butter and wool in the oasis markets, take protection money (khuwwa) from villages and caravans, and serve the sharifs or the caravan commanders for pay.
Where the sources disagree
- Ibn al-Athir's tribe name for the 1194 attack is read as Zu'b (a Sulaymi clan); the Arabic is uncertain in the summary seen.
Evidence: The 1194 attack is dated; the identification of the Zu'b as Sulaymi is mine.
On the map: Rough range.
Primary sources for The Bedouin
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- History of the Observant Traveller (A Traveller in Thirteenth-Century Arabia), Ibn al-Mujawir (Jamal al-Din Yusuf ibn Ya'qub) (about 1226 to 1232). A merchant-traveller's description of western and southern Arabia a generation after 1200: Mecca and the Hijaz ports, the Red Sea crossing, Zabid and the Tihama, Aden with its customs and tariffs, the Hadramawt coast, Dhofar and Oman, Socotra, and the opposite African shore at Zeila and the Dahlak islands. Read online
Sources and studies
- Banu Sulaym (English Wikipedia, citing Lecker, EI2 1997)
- Hashim ibn Qasim ibn Muhanna (tarajm.com, from Arif Ahmad Abd al-Ghani, Tarikh umara' al-Madina, quoting Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil, year 590)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.