Banū al-Ḥārith ibn al-Khazraj

Overview

Banū al-Ḥārith ibn al-Khazraj is one of the larger sections the genealogists place under al-Khazraj at Medina, reckoned to al-Ḥārith ibn al-Khazraj ibn Ḥāritha — that is, a son of the tribal ancestor himself, which is why the section stands beside Banū al-Najjār, Banū Sāʿida and Banū Salima rather than under one of them. Their quarter lay to the south-east of the settlement with their own fortified towers. This page describes a historical section and makes no statement about any modern family, surname or claim of descent.

Two houses, one name

This is the reason the page exists as much as any other. The genealogies of the Anṣār contain two men named al-Khazraj: al-Khazraj ibn Ḥāritha, the tribe, and al-Khazraj ibn ʿAmr ibn Mālik ibn al-Aws, an ancestor inside al-Aws whose father ʿAmr bears the byname al-Nabīt. Each of them had a son called al-Ḥārith. So Banū al-Ḥārith ibn al-Khazraj names a Khazrajī section and also an Awsī house, from which the sources derive Banū Ḥāritha and, through Jusham, Banū ʿAbd al-Ashhal. A source that gives the name without the chain has not yet told a reader which house it means, and the two are reckoned to different tribes.

The name

The root ḥ-r-th in Lisān al-ʿArab is tillage and, by extension, earning and gathering. Al-Ḥārith is among the most frequent of all Arab personal names — the lexicographers and genealogists both remark on how often it occurs — and Ḥāritha is formed from the same root. That frequency is what produces collisions of this kind, here and throughout the genealogies.

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. Where one name fits two houses, as it does here, an attribution without a chain establishes nothing at all, and this page affirms none.