Al-Qushayri

Overview

Al-Qushayri (al-Qushayrī) is the nisba of Qushayr ibn Kaʿb ibn Rabīʿa ibn ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa, reckoned by the genealogists to Hawāzin under Muḍar, with its remembered range in Najd and, in the later sources, in the Jazīra and eastward into Khurāsān. Qushayr is in Lisān al-ʿArab the diminutive of qishr, the rind or outer covering of a thing; the root is q-sh-r.

Names easily confused

The nisba has no close look-alike, so what needs separating is what it does and does not settle. It is frequent in the early literature as a scholarly nisba, and there a bearer may be a member of the tribe by descent or a mawlā attached to it by clientage, the sources distinguishing the two only where they happen to know. Qushayr is besides an ordinary diminutive personal name, so a nisba can be founded on a forebear who bore it with no tribal sense. And it sits at the same tier as al-Kilābī, al-ʿUqaylī and al-Numayrī, all branches of one parent, so a line may be given a narrower or a wider name — al-ʿĀmirī — depending on which book is speaking.

Bearing the name

A tribal nisba records what a family is called, not who its ancestors were. It may follow descent (ṣarīḥ), alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and only a family's own documented record tells those apart.