Banū al-ʿAnbar

Overview

Banū al-ʿAnbar is recorded by the genealogists as a house of Banū Tamīm reckoned through ʿAmr ibn Tamīm, and it is one of the Tamīmī sections that the older literature names frequently. It is a historical tribe as the classical books describe it, and nothing here is a statement about any family living now.

The name, and the form Balʿanbar

The lexicographers give ʿanbar first as the well-known perfume, and also as the great sea creature from whose hide shields were made, and they list al-ʿAnbar besides as the forefather of a clan of Tamīm without pressing the derivation further. More useful to a reader of the old texts is what Arabic did to the name in speech: Banū al-ʿAnbar was contracted to Balʿanbar, in the same way that Banū al-Ḥārith was contracted to Balḥārith. This is a recognised feature of the language, not a copyist's error, and a reader who meets Balʿanbar in a chronicle or a line of verse is meeting this same group and not a separate tribe.

Where the sources place them

Al-ʿAnbar is placed with the rest of ʿAmr ibn Tamīm in eastern Najd, in the country between the sands and the road towards Basra, and Tamīmī sections including this one are recorded afterwards among the Arab settlement of Iraq. The geographers name watering places and stretches of that country after Tamīmī houses, which is the ordinary way a tribe's presence enters the geographical books.

On lineage

The branches and affiliations set out above are given as reported by the classical genealogists, who differ among themselves: the ordering of the sections, and which section is reckoned under which, are not settled in the sources. Nothing on this page establishes any living family's descent — a shared name may reflect descent, alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and the sources say which only when they know. This page describes a historical tribe as the early writers recorded it, and makes no claim about any modern family.