 The former claimed descent from the Banu 'Abs tribe that arrived in Syria as part of Khalid ibn al-Walid's army in the mid-7th-century.A member, Sheikh Abd al-Qader, served as ar-Rastan's "mukhtar" in the late Ottoman and French Mandate periods.Abd al-Qader was the father of Mustafa Tlass who would become Defense Minister under Hafez al-Assad in 1972.