Bani Hasan

Overview

Banī Ḥasan — written بنو حسن, and heard as Banī Ḥasan in the oblique — is reported as a grouping of the middle Euphrates country of al-ʿIrāq. Before anything else is said, the name itself must be dealt with, because on its own it identifies nothing. This page describes a historical name as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

A name that identifies nothing on its own

Ḥasan is among the commonest names Arabs have given their sons, and banū + a father's name is the ordinary way of forming a group-name. The two together produce a name that has been coined independently, again and again, in places that have nothing to do with each other: groups called Banū Ḥasan are reported in al-ʿIrāq, in the Levant, in Egypt, in the Maghrib and in the Peninsula, and there is no reason to suppose them related. Finding the name in a family record establishes nothing beyond the name. Where a claim of descent is made under it, the claim has to be shown from evidence outside the name, and this reference does not make such claims.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root ḥ-s-n for beauty and goodness, the opposite of qubḥ, and gives ḥasan as an adjective and as a proper name. The lexicon explains the word; it does not attach it to any people.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites — Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī, Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr and Ibn Khaldūn — do not document this grouping. Its present shape is later than all of them by centuries, and what is reported about it comes from oral tradition and from later writing that lies outside the sources this reference is permitted to use. The chief difficulty here is not the silence of the sources but the commonness of the name. The page therefore records the name, the country it is reported in, and what the reports attach it to. It does not record a descent, and nothing on it should be read as one. The page keeps to the name and to what the classical works do and do not contain, and does not enter later history.

On lineage

Branch lists and affiliations here are given as reported, and the genealogists differ among themselves. 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.