Has anyone been to the Royal Haciendas?

Can anyone tell me if the current Saudi royal family belongs to the tribe of Quraish?

• Can anyone tell me if the current Saudi royal family belongs to the tribe of Quraish? I had read somewhere that the Saudi royal family are not from Quraish but they are related to Bani Hanifah (who were desert nomads living in Northern Arabia) which are not in any way related to the Meccan Quraish family. Can anyone confirm this and let me know the details and if this is true? Thanks

• Answer:

  The descent has been traced to the Mrudah clan,the the al Sauds say they are related to the large bedouin 'Anizzah confederation of northern Arabia and the Syrian desert. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud says: "The earliest recorded ancestor of the Al Saud was Mani' ibn Rabi'ah al-Muraydi, who, according to the chroniclers of Nejd, settled in Diriyah in 1446-7 with his clan, the Mrudah. Mani had been invited to settle there by a relative named Ibn Dir', who was then the ruler of a set of villages and estates that make up modern-day Riyadh. Mani's clan had been on a soujorn in east Arabia, near al-Qatif, from an unknown point in time. Ibn Dir' handed Mani' two estates called al-Mulaybeed and Ghusayba, which Mani' and his family settled and renamed "al-Diriyah", after their benefactor Ibn Dir'.[3][4] Genealogically, the Mrudah are regarded as belonging to the ancient Arab tribal confederation of Rabi`ah, through the branch of Wa'il. However, there is disagreement as to which branch of Wa'il they belong to. The dominant opinion in their native Nejd is that they are remnants of the now-extinct tribe of Bani Hanifa, who are credited with founding most of Nejd's settlements including Riyadh. The oldest written reference to the Mrudah, a short genealogical manuscript from the 17th century, supports this view. Others, including many members of the Al Saud themselves, however, insist that they are descendants of the large bedouin 'Anizzah confederation of northern Arabia and the Syrian desert. The earliest written reference to this view comes from the Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, on the authority of Anizzah tribesmen whom he encountered in northwestern Arabia in the early 19th century. Both the 'Anizzah and the Bani Hanifa, however, are branches of the Bani Wa'il of Rabi'ah.[5] The Mrudah became rulers of al-Diriyah, which prospered along the banks of Wadi Hanifa and became an important Nejdi settlement. As the clan grew larger, power struggles ensued, with one branch leaving to nearby Dhruma, while another branch (the "Al Watban") left for the town of az-Zubayr in southern Iraq. The Al Migrin ("House of Migrin") then became the ruling family among the Mrudah in Diriyah. After some initial struggles in the early 18th century, Muhammad ibn Saud, of the Al Migrin, became the undisputed amir ("prince", or ruler) of the town and its surrounding estates. In 1744, Muhammad ibn Saud took in a fugitive religious cleric named Muhammad ibn Abdel Wahhab, from nearby al-Uyayna. Ibn Saud agreed to provide political support to Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's project to reform Islamic practice, which Ibn Abd al-Wahhab believed had strayed far from the ideals set by the Muslim Prophet, Muhammad, and his companions. This marked the beginning of the First Saudi State. Later on, Saudi loyalists came to refer to Muhammad ibn Saud and his successors by the title of "Imam", signifying that they saw the emir of Dir'iyyah as the temporal leader of an Islamic state, rather than simply another clan leader or village ruler."