page_title: Buhturids
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Buhturids / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Islamic Syria (Bilad al-Sham) under the Rashidun caliphs Umar and Uthman. The map shows the approximate boundaries of Syria's military districts before their reorganization during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, the region's major towns during this period, and the territories of the major resident Arab tribes before the mass tribal migrations from Arabia during the governorship of Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan (639-661). Sources for tribes and approximate district boundaries: Donner, Fred M. (1981). The Early Islamic Conquests. Princeton: Princeton University Press ISBN 0-691-05327-8 Hinds, M. (1993). "Muʿāwiya I b. Abī Sufyān". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P. &amp; Pellat, Ch. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume VII: Mif–Naz. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 263–268. ISBN 90-04-09419-9. Sourdel, D. (1965). "Filasṭīn — I. Palestine under Islamic Rule". In Lewis, B.; Pellat, Ch. &amp; Schacht, J. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume II: C–G. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 910–913. ISBN 90-04-07026-5.
context_page_description: The Buhturids, also known as the Banu Buhtur or the Tanukh, were a clan whose chiefs served as the emirs of the Gharb in Mount Lebanon in the 12th–15th centuries. A branch of the Tanukhid tribal confederation, they were settled in the Gharb by the Muslim atabegs of Damascus following the capture of Beirut, northwest of the Gharb, by the Crusaders in 1110 to guard the mountainous frontier between the Crusader coastlands and the Islamic interior of the Levant. They were granted iqtas over villages in the Gharb and command over its peasant warriors, who subscribed to the Druze religion, which the Buhturids professed. Their iqtas were successively confirmed, decreased or increased by the Burid, Zengid, Ayyubid and Mamluk rulers of Damascus in return for military service and intelligence gathering in the war with the Crusader lordships of Beirut and Sidon. In times of peace the Buhturids maintained working relations with the Crusaders.
  The Buhturids' peak of power occurred under the Circassian Mamluk sultan Barquq, who they supported during his seizure of power from his Turkic predecessors.
context_section_description: The Buhturids were a clan of the Tanukh, an Arab tribal confederation whose presence in the Levant dated to at least the 4th century CE when they served as the first Arab foederati (tribal confederates) of the Byzantine Empire. At the time, the Tanukh were ardent Orthodox Christians, and remained in Byzantine service until the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s. Although part of the confederation fled to Byzantine Anatolia, they primarily remained in their dwelling places around Aleppo and Qinnasrin (Chalcis) in the northern Levant and eventually allied with the Levant-based Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) while largely retaining their Christian faith. After the execution of their preeminent chieftain Layth ibn Mahatta by the Iraq-based Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi (r. 775–785) for refusing to embrace Islam, the tribe converted and their churches were destroyed. During the reign of al-Mahdi's son Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), the Tanukh's settlements were raided by rebels, forcing their flight from the Qinnasrin area to the northern Levantine coastal mountains, which were thenceforth called Jabal Tanukh or Jabal Bahra' after the Tanukh and the tribe of Bahra'.
caption: Map of the early Islamic Levant. The Tanukh encamped near Aleppo and Qinnasrin throughout Byzantine and Umayyad rule until migrating to the mountains northwest of Homs in the late 8th century
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