Banū Arḥab

Overview

The genealogists enter Arḥab among the divisions of Bakīl, the half of Hamdān that stands opposite Ḥāshid in every list. Its country is the upland north and north-east of Sanaa, running out toward al-Jawf, and al-Hamdānī names that country by the tribe's own name — a common Yemeni pattern in which the district and the people who hold it are called the same thing. That is an association of place, not a record of descent, and it says nothing about who holds the ground at any later date. This page describes a historical tribe and makes no claim about any modern family.

Al-arḥabiyya

Arḥab is unusual in being attested in the dictionary rather than only in the genealogies. Ibn Manẓūr records al-arḥabiyya as a class of fine riding camels attributed to Arḥab, which he names as a clan of Hamdān. The poets use the word without explaining it, which is the surest sign that their audience did not need the explanation. A tribal name that has entered the language as a common adjective is better attested than most branch lists are: the lexicon has no interest in the tribe's standing and no reason to flatter it, so its testimony is of a different order from a genealogist's list.

The name

The root r-ḥ-b is width and spaciousness. Ibn Manẓūr gives raḥb for the wide place and riḥāb for wide expanses, and explains the greeting marḥaban as telling a man he has come to open ground where he will not be cramped. Arḥab is built on the afʿal pattern, which in this root reads as the wider or the widest. The lexicographers record the root and record the tribal name; they do not state that the one was taken from the other, and this reference does not supply the connection for them.

On lineage

This page describes a historical tribe as the classical sources record it, and makes no claim about any modern family. Branch lists and affiliations are given as reported by the genealogists, who themselves disagree. Nothing here 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.