Al-Khazraj

Overview

Al-Khazraj is the second of the two tribes that held Yathrib, the town later called al-Madīna, and with al-Aws it makes up the two the sources call al-Anṣār from the hijra onward. The genealogists reckon it to al-Khazraj ibn Ḥāritha ibn Thaʿlaba ibn ʿAmr ibn ʿĀmir, and through him to al-Azd, to Kahlān and so to Qaḥṭān, as they report it and with the disagreement over middle names that attends every such chain. With al-Aws it is called Banū Qayla after a mother the sources name for both. This page describes a historical tribe and makes no statement about any modern family, surname or claim of descent.

The name

In Lisān al-ʿArab the khazraj is a wind: the lexicographers gloss it as a cold wind, and many of them make it specifically the south wind. Winds furnished Arab personal names readily, and the name is best read as one of that class. As elsewhere, the lexicon gives the sense of the word and not the reason a particular man carried it.

The sections the sources place under it

The lists branch al-Khazraj into five sons — ʿAmr, ʿAwf, Jusham, al-Ḥārith and Kaʿb — and from these derive the sections a reader meets by name in the accounts of Medina. Banū al-Najjār are placed under ʿAmr, Banū Sāʿida under Kaʿb, Banū Salima under Jusham, and Banū al-Ḥārith ibn al-Khazraj under al-Ḥārith. The genealogists enumerate more sections under al-Khazraj than under al-Aws, which is a fact about their chapters and not necessarily about numbers on the ground.

Two men named al-Khazraj

The name occurs twice in this genealogy, and confusing the two is the commonest error a reader makes here. Al-Khazraj ibn Ḥāritha is the tribe. But the lists also give al-Khazraj ibn ʿAmr ibn Mālik ibn al-Aws, an ancestor inside al-Aws, whose father ʿAmr carries the byname al-Nabīt. The Awsī sections ʿAbd al-Ashhal, Ẓafar and Ḥāritha all descend from that second al-Khazraj. A consequence follows that catches people out: Banū al-Ḥārith ibn al-Khazraj names a Khazrajī section and also an Awsī house, and the two are not the same.

Al-Anṣār is a designation, not a name of descent

Al-Anṣār, the helpers, is from the root n-ṣ-r, aid and support. The sources apply it to the two tribes from the hijra onward; it is a designation earned in history, while the names of descent remain al-Aws and al-Khazraj. The nisba al-Anṣārī has long been borne in countries far from Medina, and bearing it tells a reader nothing about descent from either tribe.

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. Sections named here are given as the sources place them, and where a name is shared with a house of al-Aws the page says so rather than merging the two.