Azd al-Sarāt

Overview

Azd al-Sarāt is the Azd of the mountain wall that runs north from Yemen toward the country of al-Ṭāʾif, and it is one of the standard divisions of al-Azd. Al-Hamdānī, who knew this country, describes Azdī settlement along the range and the terraced villages beside it, and the sources reckon Ghāmid, Zahrān and Daws to this side of the Azd. This page describes historical groups and makes no claim about any modern family.

The branches as reported

Ghāmid and Zahrān are the two names most consistently attached here, and Daws is counted by many genealogists within Zahrān rather than beside it. The orderings differ from book to book, as they do everywhere in the Azdī chapters. It is worth adding what the geography does not say: the Sarāt holds groups the sources do not reckon to Azd at all — Banī Mālik and other sections of the highlands are treated separately — so living on the range is not by itself an Azdī attribution.

Shanūʾa and the Sarāt

The relation between this name and Azd Shanūʾa is unsettled. The four-fold reckoning keeps them apart; the three-fold reckoning makes them one. Neither is the agreed reading, and a source that names one may mean what another means by the other. The safe course, and the one the classical books themselves follow when they are careful, is to work from the branch name and not from the division above it.

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.