ʿAbd al-Qays

Overview

ʿAbd al-Qays is one of the largest tribes the genealogists place under Rabīʿa. Ibn Ḥazm reckons it ʿAbd al-Qays ibn Afṣā ibn Duʿmiy ibn Jadīla ibn Asad ibn Rabīʿa — as reported, and the sources differ over the intermediate names in that chain as they differ over most such chains. It is entered in the Rabīʿa section beside Bakr and Taghlib rather than under either of them, which is worth noting because casual accounts often fold every Rabīʿa tribe into Bakr.

The country the geographers record for it is the eastern seaboard of Arabia: al-Baḥrayn in the classical sense — the coast running from the approaches of al-Baṣra down to the borders of ʿUmān, not the island state known by that name today — together with Hajar, al-Qaṭīf and al-Khaṭṭ. Yāqūt describes this as a country of palms, wells and landing places rather than of open desert, and the reports about the tribe are set on that coast as often as on the routes inland toward al-Yamāma and al-Aḥsāʾ.

One small detail carries the association further than any lineage claim can. The spears the poets call khaṭṭī are named for al-Khaṭṭ on that coast, where the imported cane was landed and straightened; the name is a geographical attribution, and it fixed the country of ʿAbd al-Qays in the poetic vocabulary of the whole peninsula.

The name

ʿAbd al-Qays follows the old compound pattern of ʿabd plus a name, which in pre-Islamic usage was not confined to the divine names the pattern later carried. The lexicographers give qāsa as measuring or estimating, and record al-Qays among the personal names of the Arabs — Imruʾ al-Qays and Qays being the familiar members of the family. It is also reported that al-Qays was the name of an idol. The reports are not uniform, and no conclusion about the tribe should be drawn from the derivation of its name.

In the genealogical tradition

The genealogists name Lukayz, Shann, ʿĀmir, Muḥārib, al-Dīl, Nukra and Judhayma among its branches, and the lists differ from book to book — some treat a name as a son, others as a grandson, and the same section may be entered under either. Where a branch is given here it is given as the sources report it, not as a settled fact.

Of Shann the proverb-collectors report the saying that Shann matched Ṭabaqa, told in more than one version; and the accounts of the delegations report a delegation of ʿAbd al-Qays coming from al-Baḥrayn to the Prophet, which is why the tribe's name is familiar to readers who have met no other Rabīʿa tribe.

On lineage

This page describes a historical tribe as the classical sources record it, and makes no claim about any modern family. Branch lists and affiliations are given as reported by the genealogists, who themselves disagree. Nothing here establishes any living family's descent: a shared name may reflect descent, alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and the sources usually say which only when they know.