Forging a Scholarly Dynasty: The Banū Fahd in Mamluk and Early Ottoman Mecca

This article examines how the Banū Fahd of Mecca successfully established and maintained a scholarly dynasty specialising in ḥadīth transmission across multiple generations during the Mamluk period (eighth/fourteenth-eleventh/seventeenth centuries). Drawing on social reproduction theory, the study analyses the deliberate strategies through which this family transformed itself from judge-merchants into “the ḥadīth transmitters of the Hijaz.”
The analysis focuses on Taqī al-Dīn Muḥammad (d. 871/1466) as the pivotal figure who systematically forged the family’s scholarly identity through multiple interconnected strategies: intensive early education of children and relatives, strategic exploitation of Mecca’s position as a pilgrimage centre to build networks with visiting scholars, creation of a family library that became a regional resource, development of sophisticated information management tools (indexes, notebooks, summaries), cultivation of excellence in manuscript copying, and elaboration of genealogical claims linking the family to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib.
These practices were consciously transmitted across several generations, creating a cumulative effect that sustained the family’s reputation into the early eleventh/seventeenth century. The study demonstrates that this scholarly dynasty succeeded not through passive inheritance but through active, systematic cultivation of multiple forms of capital—economic, social, cultural, and symbolic—deployed strategically to reproduce elite status across generations.