Editing Shammar (section)

==Origins==
The Shammar are a tribal confederation made up of three main branches: Abdah, Al-Aslam, and Sinjarah. The earliest non-Arab sources refer to Arabs as Taits, thought of as referring to the Tayy, as [[Iyas ibn Qabisah al-Ta'i]], a governor of [[al-Hirah]] in [[Lower Mesopotamia]] in the [[Lakhmid kingdom]], had contact with both the [[Byzantine]] and [[Sasanian Empire|Sasanian]] Empires. Since some sections of Tayy, and most of the [[Ghassanids]] and Lakhmids, were present in [[Mesopotamia]] and the [[Levant]] prior to Muhammad's preaching of Islam in the early [[7th century]]. In the [[Namara inscription]] (the second oldest [[Pre-Islamic Arabia|pre-Islamic Arabic]] inscription, dating from 328 CE), the name "Shammar" is believed to refer to a city in Yemen, though it may refer to the city where the [[Himyarite]] King [[Shammar Yahri'sh]] lived, [[Radda District]] (located about {{convert|100|km}} from [[Dhamar, Yemen|Dhamar]], an ancient historic site). Since King Shammar Yahri'sh ruled during the last decade of the third century, it could be referring to the city he lived in or one named after him. It could also be referring to the city of Ha'il, although there is no evidence that [[Imru Al-Qays]] fought the Tayy.

Led by Usma bin Luai, the Tayy invaded the mountains of Ajā and [[Salma Mountains|Salma]] from [[Banu Assad]] and [[Banu Tamim]] in northern Arabia in their exodus from Yemen in 115 CE. These mountains are now known as the [[Shammar Mountains|Shammar]]. The Tayy became nomadic camel-herders and horse-breeders in northern [[Najd]] for centuries. Because of their strength and blood relations with the Yemenite dynasties that came to rule Syria (The Ghassanids) and Iraq (The Lakhmids), the Tayy expanded north into Iraq all the way to the capital at the time, [[Al-Hirah]]. The area of the two mountains subsequently came to be known as "[[Jabal Shammar]]" ("Shammar's Mountain") from the 14th century, the first time that the Shammar as a tribe were noted in literature.