ADMINISTRATIONmission and the distance of a person's station from the ruler was
determined by status.^188 Precedence usually went to kinsmen, in-laws,
close friends, and henchmen, and then to notables and tribal leaders
in order of importance. 'Ajlan is supposed to have told Ziyad that he
admitted members of outstanding families (Ar. al-buyUtat) first, then
those with noble genealogies (Ar. al-ansab), and then those with good
manners.189 Others were kept waiting unless they had friends or rel-
atives favored by the ruler to intercede for them, as in the case of
'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Zurara al-Kilabi, who waited at Mu'awiya's gate
at Damascus in a woolen cloak for a year until his kinsmen (Ar.
aqwam) got permission for him to enter.^190
The effects of selective and controlled admission to those who had
authority and power enlarged the circle of close relatives, favorites,
and trusted mawau who had access to the ruler or governor and who
participated in his decisions, received appointments to office, shared
in his largess, and served as intermediaries and patrons for those
without such privileged access. This was an elite created by the need
for trust. As authority was being increasingly delegated in an ex-
panding administrative system, kinsmen who were bound by family
solidarity or new men who owed their positions and fortunes to the
ruler were most readily trusted. The new elite that emerged around
the courts of early Islamic rulers were a combination of members of
the families of Abii Sufyan and Marwan ibn al-J:lakam, who had been
among the leading families of Makka, and of new men, mawau, and
proteges such as the circle of Ziyad, which may have been based, in
part, on old ties between the tribe of Quraysh at Makka and the tribe
of Thaqif at Ta'if. By the time of MU'awiya and Ziyad, other tribal
leaders were beginning to be subordinated to this elite while ordinary
Arab tribesmen were even further removed from access to their leaders
and were increasingly treated like the native subject population.
For those who felt that their positions of tribal leadership or noble
descent were being slighted, resentment at the humiliation and scorn
of being kept waiting or of not being admitted at all was directed
against the lJajib. Khusraw Aniishirvan is supposed to have required
that the lJajib for his public audiences be impolite and remote, rough
in his speech, always stem, and very suspicious. In the early Islamic
period a conscientious lJajib might provoke violence, as when Nafi'
ibn Jubayr broke the nose of the lJajib who tried to prevent him from
188 Ibn Abi 1-l:Iadid, Nahj, XVII, 94-95.
189 Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi, 'Iqd, I, 67; V, 12.
190 Ibn Abi l:Iadid, 'Iqd, XVII, 93.