Banū al-Najjār

Overview

Banū al-Najjār is one of the sections the genealogists place under al-Khazraj at Medina. They reckon it to a man they name Taym al-Lāt ibn Thaʿlaba ibn ʿAmr ibn al-Khazraj, whose byname al-Najjār displaced his given name in usage — the compilers write the given name both as Taym al-Lāt and, in later copies, as Taym Allāh, which is a scribal softening of a pre-Islamic theophoric name and worth noticing when the two spellings appear side by side. This page describes a historical section and makes no statement about any modern family, surname or claim of descent.

The name

The root n-j-r in Lisān al-ʿArab covers the working of wood, whence al-najjār the carpenter. The same root carries a second sense the genealogists lean on more: al-najr is a thing's origin, stock or cast, and the Arabs said karīm al-najr and karīm al-nijār of a man of good stock. The sources explain the byname in more than one way and do not settle on one. The lexicon gives the senses of the word, not the reason this man was called by it.

Where the sources place them

Their quarter lay in the heart of the settlement, and the accounts of Medina place the site of the Prophet's mosque among them. The genealogists also record them as the maternal kin of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, through Salmā bint ʿAmr of this section, whom they name as the wife of Hāshim of Quraysh — a link of marriage between a Meccan house and a Yathribī one, reported as such and not a line of descent for either. Compilers differ over the detail.

Al-Najjār as a family name

Al-Najjār is one of the most widely borne family names in the Arabic-speaking world, and it is overwhelmingly occupational: a carpenter's name, formed exactly as al-Ḥaddād from smithing and al-Khayyāṭ from tailoring. A family bearing it is not thereby attributed to this section of al-Khazraj, and this reference makes no such attribution. The point generalises: an occupational nisba and a tribal one can be spelled identically and mean entirely different things.

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. Here a fourth route applies as well — a trade name — which is the likelier explanation of the name in most families that carry it.