Al-Juḥaysh

Overview

Al-Juḥaysh — written الجحيش, commonly vowelled al-Juḥaysh — is reported of groups in the Tigris country of al-ʿIrāq and in the Jazīra. This page describes a historical name as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

Reported in more than one arrangement

The name is placed differently by different accounts. Some arrange al-Juḥaysh under Zubayd; others give it as a section within Shammar; and the name is in any case borne by more than one group, so that two people who both carry it need not be answering to the same report. That is the substance of what can honestly be said, and it is more useful than a tidy structure would be. Both Zubayd and Shammar have their own pages in this reference; neither page should be read as absorbing this name.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root j-ḥ-sh: al-jaḥsh is the young of the ass, and juḥaysh is its diminutive; the same root gives al-jaḥīsh for one who keeps apart from people — nazala juḥayshan, he camped alone, away from the rest. Which of these, if either, produced the name of a people is not something the lexicon tells us, and it does not mention the group.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites — Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī, Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr and Ibn Khaldūn — do not document al-Juḥaysh. Its present shape is later than all of them by centuries, and what is reported about it comes from oral tradition and from later writing that lies outside the sources this reference is permitted to use. The page therefore records the name, the country it is reported in, and what the reports attach it to. It does not record a descent, and nothing on it should be read as one. The page keeps to the name and to what the classical works do and do not contain, and does not enter later history.

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.