Banū Kharūṣ

Overview

Banū Kharūṣ — written بنو خروص, and the nisba Kharūṣī — are reported in the western Ḥajar of ʿUmān, in the valley and villages that carry the same name, and are commonly reckoned of the Azd of ʿUmān, though nothing in the classical works documents that reckoning. This page describes a historical tribe as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

A valley and a people with one name

The valley is called by the tribe's name and the tribe by the valley's, and the reports do not say which came first. This is the ordinary case in mountain country: a group settled in a valley long enough gives its name to the ground, or takes the ground's name for itself, and after a few generations no one can tell the direction. The page notes the double use rather than deriving either from the other, and treats a report placing people "in Wādī Banī Kharūṣ" as a statement of where they were.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root kh-r-ṣ for kharaṣa — to estimate the fruit on the palm before it is picked, whence al-khāriṣ, the one who makes the estimate — and, in another sense of the same letters, for al-khirṣ, a ring worn in the ear. The lexicon explains the word. It does not say why a people came to be called by it, and it does not mention this tribe.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites — Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī, Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr and Ibn Khaldūn — do not document Banū Kharūṣ. Al-Hamdānī describes ʿUmān and the Azd settled in it, and Yāqūt names its mountains and valleys, but neither names this tribe, and a citation for a country is not a citation for a people in it. The tribe's present shape postdates all six works, and what is reported about it comes from oral tradition and from modern writing outside what this reference may use. The page records the name, the valley it is reported in, and the affiliation as reported; it does not record a descent.

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.