Banī Jumaḥ

Overview

The genealogists reckon this clan to Jumaḥ ibn ʿAmr ibn Huṣayṣ ibn Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy, which makes it, in their arrangement, as close as a clan can be to Banī Sahm: the two are reckoned to one father, ʿAmr ibn Huṣayṣ, and the Meccan accounts seldom name either without the other. The reports add that his given name was Taym and that Jumaḥ was a by-name that stuck; jamūḥ in the lexicons is the horse that gets the better of its rider and runs on, past the bridle. That detail is worth more than it looks: clan names are often settled nicknames rather than birth names, so a name preserved in a lineage need not be the name a man was given. In the division of Quraysh into Muṭayyabūn and Aḥlāf, Banī Jumaḥ are counted with the Aḥlāf alongside Banī Sahm, Banī ʿAbd al-Dār, Banī Makhzūm and Banī ʿAdī — a grouping by pact, not by descent, and the clearest reminder that Quraysh acted in blocs its own genealogy does not draw. The accounts that distribute the Meccan offices among the clans assign the maysir arrows to Jumaḥ, and the sources differ over the details of that distribution well enough that it should be read as the received version rather than a settled fact. This page describes a historical clan and makes no statement about any modern family.

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.