Banū Ḥimmān

Overview

Banū Ḥimmān is one of the houses the genealogists place under Saʿd ibn Zayd Manāt of Banū Tamīm, reckoned through Kaʿb ibn Saʿd in the chains the books give. It belongs to the middling rank of tribal names — attested often enough that the classical books keep it in their lists, not so prominent that they set out its sections at length. This page describes a historical group as the early books have it, with no bearing on any modern family.

The name and its vowelling

The books give the name as Ḥimmān, with a kasra on the ḥāʾ and a doubled mīm, and they do not stop to explain where it came from; a clan name of this rank is generally recorded and left as it stands. That silence is better respected than filled in with a guess. Worth noting too is that in unvowelled writing the name sits close to others of similar consonants, so an attribution copied without its vowels can drift from one house to another.

Where the sources place them

Ḥimmān is placed with the body of Saʿd in eastern Najd, and Tamīmī houses of this rank appear afterwards in the accounts of the Arab settlement of Iraq, where the poets and genealogists of Basra recorded them.

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.