Abdallah Kanz el-Dawla

The Banu Kanz were a semi-nomadic Muslim dynasty of Arab Banu Hanifa stock, mixed through marriage with the Beja Hadariba, dominating the frontier between Upper Egypt and Nubia from the tenth to fifteenth century. In 1006 their chief captured a rebel for the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, who rewarded him with the hereditary title Kanz al-Dawla, Treasure of the State, giving the house its name.

In 1174 the Kanz al-Dawla Ibn al-Mutawwaj rose against Saladin in a failed bid to restore the Fatimids. In 1317 the Mamluk sultan imposed Barshanbu as king of Makuria, but the Kanz al-Dawla, nephew of the deposed King Karanbas, seized the crown and held it despite two Mamluk expeditions, the last in 1324.

The Kanz al-Dawla surrendered to Mamluk power in 1365. Sultan Barquq sent the Hawwara against them, and by the early fifteenth century the Hawwara had supplanted the Banu Kanz on the frontier.