Jurhum

Jurhum was a Yemeni tribe that settled in Mecca with the permission of Isma'il's mother, and Isma'il married into it. After his sons, it governed the affairs of Mecca for some twenty centuries, until Khuza'a drove it out ^{1 2 3}.

A Yemeni tribe came, the second Jurhum, and settled in Mecca with the permission of Isma'il's mother. It is said that before that they had been in the valleys on the outskirts of Mecca ^{1 4}. The narration of al-Bukhari states that they came to Mecca after Isma'il was settled and before he grew up, and that they used to pass through this valley before that ^{1 5}. When Isma'il grew up and learned Arabic from them, they married him to a woman of theirs. Then he married the daughter of Mudad ibn Amr, the greatest and lord of Jurhum ^{5 6}.

After Isma'il and his sons Nabit and Qaydar, the rule of Mecca passed to their grandfather Mudad ibn Amr al-Jurhumi. Leadership of Mecca moved to Jurhum and stayed in their hands. Isma'il's descendants held a respected position because of their father's building of the House, but had no share in the rule ^{2 7 8}. The author estimates Jurhum's stay in Mecca at about twenty-one centuries, and their rule over it at about twenty centuries ^{9 3}.

Jurhum's power weakened shortly before Bukhtanasar (Nebuchadnezzar) appeared, and the political star of Adnan began to rise over Mecca. This is shown by the fact that the leader of the Arabs in Bukhtanasar's raid on them at Dhat Irq was not a Jurhumite ^{9 10}. When Ma'add returned to Mecca, he found none of Jurhum except Jurshum ibn Jalhama, and he married Jurshum's daughter Mu'ana, who bore him Nizar ^{9 11}. Then the affairs of Jurhum in Mecca deteriorated and their circumstances became straitened. They wronged the newcomers and made free with the property of the Ka'ba, so Khuza'a fought them with the help of Banu Bakr ibn Abd Manaf ibn Kinana, until they expelled them from Mecca around the middle of the second century CE ^{9 12}. When Jurhum went into exile, they blocked up Zamzam and hid its place. They buried in it the two golden gazelles of the Ka'ba and the cornerstone, and they set off for Yemen, grieving over what they had left in Mecca ^{9 13}. See the expulsion of Jurhum from Mecca.