ʿAns

Overview

ʿAns is one of the tribes the genealogists enter under Madhḥij, reckoned ʿAns ibn Mālik ibn Udad — Mālik being the man the compilers identify with Madhḥij itself — which makes it, as reported, a brother line to Murād and to the other Madhḥijī sections. Its country is placed in the Yemeni highlands south-east of Ṣanʿāʾ, and the name recurs in the early historical accounts of Yemen more often than its size in the genealogies would suggest. This page describes a historical tribe as the classical sources record it, and makes no claim about any modern family.

Not ʿAnz, and not ʿAnizah

This is the single most useful thing the page can say. ʿAns is written with a sīn; ʿAnz, an old tribe the genealogists place under Rabīʿa, is written with a zāy, and ʿAnizah is a third name again. The three are separate entries in the genealogical books, on separate branches of the whole scheme — ʿAns among the Qaḥṭānī tribes of Yemen, ʿAnz among the ʿAdnānī tribes of Rabīʿa. Casual writing merges them on the strength of a similar shape, and once merged they are almost impossible to pull apart again, because every later mention inherits the error.

The name

Lisān al-ʿArab gives al-ʿans for a strong, well-built she-camel, and enters ʿAns as a tribe of Yemen. The lexicon supplies the sense of the word; it does not tell us why a people was called by it, and none of the compilers claims otherwise.

In the historical accounts

Two things fix the name in the early literature. The first is the rising in Yemen led by the man the sources call al-Aswad al-ʿAnsī in the years of the ridda, an episode reported in every early history of the period. The second is a lesson in how tribal names attach to people: the accounts report that ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir's father came from ʿAns to Mecca and settled there in alliance with a house of Quraysh, so the compilers give ʿAmmār both the nisba of his tribe and the attribution of the house he was allied to. Descent, alliance (ḥilf) and clientage (walāʾ) are three different things, and a name can carry any of them.

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.