The Quraysh assembly house in Makkah where tribal leaders met; site of the secret meeting to plot against the Prophet ﷺ before the Hijrah.
Makkah had no single ruler; the Quraysh were too proud to appoint one. Instead each of Makkah's subtribes (Banu Hashim, Banu Makhzum, Banu Abd al-Dar, and the rest) had its own chieftain, and Dar al-Nadwa served as the meeting place where these chieftains, none of them in charge of the others, gathered to have their say in the community's affairs. By the custom of the Arabs, a tribal chief was never deposed or disobeyed while alive, and his son would succeed him, as Abu Talib succeeded Abdul Muttalib as leader of Banu Hashim.