Rasulid dynasty

The Rasulids (Banū Rasūl) were a Sunni Muslim dynasty who ruled Yemen from 1229 to 1454. The Rasulids took their name from al-Amin's nickname "Rasul". The Zaidi Shi'i Imams of Yemen were the arch rivals of the Sunni Rasulids, and Zaidi sources emphasized the dynasty's Ghuzz origin to ensure the Qahtani majority of Yemen treats them more harshly as rootless outsiders. The term Ghuzz in Arabic sources is associated with the Oghuz Turks. The Ghuzz term appeared regularly in Zaidi literature and was for pre-Ottoman era of Oghuz Turkic mamluks & Turkic state (Seljuk) who were actively expanding in Oman to the east of Yemen, later writers used this Arabic term which describes the Oghuz Turks, in the Zaidi sources, as their reference of the Turkic origin of the Rasulids. Some historians and genealogists that served the Rasulid dynasty claimed an Arab origin for the family and pressed a Ghassanid origin for the family, a branch of the Azd. These same medieval historians and genealogists wrote that a distant ancestor of the Rasulid dynasty, who lived in the time of the Caliph Umar (634–644) converted to Christianity and went to live in Byzantine territory. The children of his purported ancestor then migrated to the lands of the Turkomans where they settled among the highest of the Turkoman tribes, the "Mandjik". According to the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam, it is probable that the Oghuz Turkic "Mendjik" tribe is meant. In the lands of the Turkomans these children of the Rasulid ancestor "lost their Arab identity entirely and intermarried with the Turkomans and spoke their language". It was only about the time of Muhammad ibn Harun himself that the family moved to Iraq and from there to Syria and, finally, to Egypt. There, they were notified by the ruling Ayyubid dynasty. The Encyclopedia of Islam concludes that, in all likelihood, the Rasulid dynasty was originally of Mendjik i.e. Oghuz Turkic origin. The historian Clifford Edmund Bosworth also states the Ghassanid ancestry to be concocted and their ancestors to be Oghuz Turks that had participated in the Seljuk invasion of the Middle East.