al-Anṣār

Overview

al-Anṣār is the collective name the sources give to the two tribes of Medina, al-Aws and al-Khazraj, after the hijra. It is not a genealogical name: there is no ancestor called Anṣār, and the word marks what the two tribes did rather than whom they descend from. By descent the genealogists give them a different collective name — Banū Qayla, after the mother from whom both al-Aws and al-Khazraj are reckoned — and it is Banū Qayla, not al-Anṣār, that stands as a lineage term in the classical books. The distinction is worth holding onto, because a name earned by a role behaves quite differently from a name inherited through a line.

In the sources

The genealogists reckon al-Aws and al-Khazraj to al-Azd, and so to Kahlān and to Qaḥṭān above it, making them Yemeni in descent though Ḥijāzī in dwelling. Their arrival at Yathrib is told as part of the general account of the departure from Maʾrib, which the sources give as transmitted narrative rather than as documented movement, and which they differ over as to which groups left and when. Within Medina the two tribes are recorded in long feud with one another before the hijra, and the sīra literature records that the name al-Anṣār attaches to them from the hijra onward. Both tribes are also recorded as the parties on the Arab side of the alliances with the Jewish tribes of the town.

Reading the name

The lexicographers refer al-Anṣār to the root n-ṣ-r, whose sense is aid given to one who is wronged or hard-pressed; al-Anṣār is the plural of nāṣir, and Ibn Manẓūr records the same root used of rain that comes to the aid of a land. The nisba formed from it is al-Anṣārī, which the biographical compilers use for a man of al-Aws or al-Khazraj — and, as with al-Qurashī, they also write al-Anṣārī mawlāhum for a client rather than a descendant. This page describes a historical group and makes no statement about any modern family: the nisba is borne today in many countries, and bearing it establishes nothing on its own.

On lineage

Branch lists and affiliations here are given as reported by the classical genealogists, who themselves disagree. Nothing on this page 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.