Kanz al-Dawla, 'Treasure of the State,' is the ancestral eponym of the Kenuz, the northernmost of the Nile Nubians. The title was first conferred in 1007 on the Arab-Beja chief Abu al-Makarim Hibat Allah by the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, and it passed to his successors, the Banu al-Kanz, who held the frontier region of Aswan and Wadi Allaqi and later pressed south into Nubia. The Kenuz of the Aswan reach trace both their descent and their very name from these lords. He is a historical and genealogical figure rather than a spirit of the river, but as the founding ancestor of a Nile Nubian people he anchors the human end of the tradition, where venerated forebears and saints occupy the ground between the living and the powers of the water.