Banī al-Ḥārith ibn Fihr

Overview

The genealogists reckon this clan to al-Ḥārith ibn Fihr ibn Mālik ibn al-Naḍr, brother of Ghālib, from whom Luʾayy and Kaʿb and the well-known Meccan clans are reckoned in turn. Its parting from the stem therefore falls, in their arrangement, at the very top of the Qurashī tree rather than near its base, and its kinship with the inner Meccan houses is that of a remote common ancestor. It is counted among the Muṭayyabūn in the accounts of the two blocs. In the lexicons ḥarth is gain and earning and al-Ḥārith is the one who earns — among the most frequently borne of Arab personal names — while a fihr is a hand-sized stone. Two points about the name are worth stating plainly. First, the sources differ over the boundary of Quraysh itself, some defining it as the descendants of Fihr and some as the descendants of al-Naḍr ibn Kināna; this clan falls inside on either definition, but the disagreement shows that the edge of the name is a scholarly judgement rather than a fixed record. Second, the nisba: al-Fihrī is formed from Fihr, who on the more common definition is the ancestor of all Quraysh, so the nisba is in origin general even though usage came to attach it especially to this line — which means it cannot on its own separate a bearer from any other descendant of Fihr. The clan is also recorded, in the same sources, among the outer Quraysh in the biṭāḥ and ẓawāhir division, a division of dwelling rather than descent that the sources themselves apportion differently. This page describes a historical clan and makes no statement about any modern family.

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.