Banū Ḥanẓala

Overview

Ḥanẓala ibn Mālik ibn Zayd Manāt ibn Tamīm is the widest of the divisions of Banū Tamīm in the arrangement of the genealogists, and a great deal of what the sources report of Tamīm is reported under it. Reckoned to Ḥanẓala, as they report it, are Mālik — from whom Dārim — and Yarbūʿ, and the group the sources call al-Barājim. Of al-Barājim the akhbār say that several sons of Ḥanẓala clasped hands together and were likened to the knuckles of the fingers, which is what barājim means in Lisān al-ʿArab; a proverb about an ill-fated envoy of theirs, inna al-shaqiyya wāfid al-Barājim, is remembered from their account. The sources also give the section the honorific Ḥanẓala al-akramūn, which is a laqab of praise and not a statement about descent. For the country, Yāqūt places Tamīm across Najd, about al-Ṣammān and the sands of al-Dahnāʾ; the later regional name al-Qaṣīm is not how the classical geographers locate them, and a modern administrative region should not be read back into an old text. This page describes a historical section of a historical tribe and says nothing about any modern family.

The name

Al-ḥanẓal in Lisān al-ʿArab is the colocynth, the bitter desert gourd that is proverbial for bitterness. Naming from plants — and from hard or bitter ones in particular — is ordinary in early Arabic naming, and nothing beyond the plant should be read into the choice.

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 (ṣarīḥ), alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and the sources usually say which only when they know.