Al-Jubūr

Overview

Al-Jubūr — written الجبور — is reported as one of the sections named under Banū Khālid, with its country placed in eastern Arabia, in al-Aḥsāʾ and the coastal and desert country about it. This page describes a historical section as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

Borne by more than one group

The name is also borne, and more widely, by a tribe of Iraq, reported along the Tigris and in the country between the rivers, and later writing gives that tribe a parentage that has nothing to do with eastern Arabia. Two unrelated groups carrying one name is the ordinary condition of Arabian tribal names rather than an anomaly, and it is the single most useful thing this page can record: a mention of al-Jubūr in a source about Iraq is not evidence about the section reported under Banū Khālid, and the reverse holds equally. Anyone joining a family or a record to either must do it on evidence other than the name, because the name supplies none.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root j-b-r for setting a broken bone and for restoring what was broken or impoverished — jabara al-ʿaẓm, and al-jabr for that mending — and from the same root come the personal names Jābir and Jabr, which are old and common. Al-Jubūr has the shape Arabic gives to a plural formed on such a name, a shape very frequent in the section names of eastern and northern Arabia. The lexicon explains the word; it does not say why any people came to be called by it, and this page does not supply a reason the sources withhold.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites — Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī, Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr and Ibn Khaldūn — do not document al-Jubūr. The arrangement of Banū Khālid and its sections in which the name appears is later than all of them by centuries, and what is reported about it comes from oral tradition and from modern writing that lies outside the sources this reference is permitted to use. Yāqūt may be cited for al-Aḥsāʾ and the eastern country as places, and it is the place that is cited, not the section. Later writing also attaches to the sections named under Banū Khālid the political history of al-Aḥsāʾ and particular houses and families; this reference records none of that and attaches no family to any name on this page.

On lineage

Branch lists and affiliations here are given as reported, and the genealogists differ among themselves. 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.