When Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-‘Ās (may Allah be pleased with them both) related that there would be a king from Qahtān, Mu‘āwiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) became angry. He stood and praised Allah as He deserves, then said: “To proceed: I have been informed that some men among you are relating reports that are neither found in the Book of Allah nor transmitted from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). Such men are the ignorant among you. Beware of wishful notions that lead those who entertain them astray, for I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) say: ‘This authority rests with Quraysh. No one opposes them without Allah casting him down upon his face, so long as they uphold the religion.’” Narrated by al-Bukhārī (1).
Mu‘āwiyah objected only because he feared that someone might suppose the caliphate could rightfully belong to someone outside Quraysh. Yet Mu‘āwiyah (may Allah be pleased with him) did not deny the emergence of the Qahtānī, for the hadith he narrated contains the qualification, “so long as they uphold the religion.” If they fail to uphold the religion, authority passes out of their hands. This has indeed occurred: the people remained obedient to Quraysh until their adherence to the religion weakened; their authority then weakened and dwindled away, and rule passed to others (2).
This Qahtānī is therefore not al-Jahjāh (3). The Qahtānī is freeborn, for he is traced to Qahtān, to whom the lineages of the Yemeni peoples—Himyar, Kindah, Hamdān, and others—ultimately go back (4). Al-Jahjāh, by contrast, is one of the bondsmen.