Editing Inner Hebrides (section)

===Dál Riata===
{{main| Dál Riata}}
Although Ptolemy's map identifies various tribes such as the ''[[Creones]]'' that might conceivably have lived in the Inner Hebrides in the Roman era,<ref name=Breeze/>
the first written records of life begin in the 6th century CE when the founding of the kingdom of [[Dál Riata]] is recorded.<ref>Nieke, Margaret R. "Secular Society from the Iron Age to Dál Riata and the Kingdom of Scots" in Omand (2006) p. 60</ref> This encompassed roughly what is now [[Argyll and Bute]] and [[Lochaber]] in Scotland and [[County Antrim]] in Ireland.<ref name="OxfordCompanion1">Lynch (2007) pp. 161 162.</ref>
[[File:St Martins Cross on Iona.jpg|thumb|The eighth century St Martin's Cross on [[Iona]]]]
In [[Argyll]] it consisted initially of three main [[clan|kindreds]]: [[Loarn mac Eirc|Cenél Loairn]] in north and mid-Argyll, [[Cenél nÓengusa]] based on Islay and [[Cenél nGabráin]] based in [[Kintyre]]. By the end of the 7th century a fourth kindred, [[Cenél Comgaill]] had emerged, based in eastern Argyll.<ref name="OxfordCompanion1"/>

The figure of [[Columba]] looms large in any history of Dál Riata and his founding of a monastery on [[Iona]] ensured that Dál Riata would be of great importance in the spread of Christianity in northern Britain. However, Iona was far from unique. [[Lismore, Scotland|Lismore]] in the territory of the Cenél Loairn, was sufficiently important for the death of its abbots to be recorded with some frequency and many smaller sites, such as on Eigg, [[Hinba]] and Tiree, are known from the annals.<ref>Clancy, Thomas Owen "Church institutions: early medieval" in Lynch (2001).</ref> The kingdom's independent existence ended in the [[Viking Age]], and it eventually merged with the lands of the [[Picts]] to form the [[Kingdom of Alba]].

North of Dál Riata the Inner Hebrides were nominally under Pictish control although the historical record is sparse.{{refn|Hunter (2000) states that in relation to King [[Bridei I of the Picts]] in the sixth century: "As for Shetland, Orkney, Skye and the Western Isles, their inhabitants, most of whom appear to have been Pictish in culture and speech at this time, are likely to have regarded Bridei as a fairly distant presence."<ref>Hunter (2000) pp. 44, 49</ref>|group=Note}}