Banū Muqāʿis

Overview

The genealogists treat Muqāʿis not as a given name but as a byname, and the books of genealogy use it as the collective title of one of the two divisions of Saʿd ibn Zayd Manāt of Tamīm, the other being al-Buṭūn. The forefather is recorded as a man of Saʿd — the sources name him al-Ḥārith — who is said to have been called Muqāʿis for the reason the word carries. This is a historical grouping as the classical books describe it, and nothing on this page speaks to any family living now.

The name

The lexicographers derive muqāʿis from a root whose sense is drawing back and holding the chest away, and they explain the byname by saying that the man hung back from an alliance that his people entered. If that explanation is right, the name is a small piece of evidence for something this reference says elsewhere in the abstract: that ḥilf, alliance, was a live and consequential arrangement, and that refusing one could mark a man and his descendants permanently. Reports of the kind are transmitted explanation rather than documented event, and the lexicons themselves give them as what is said.

Branches as reported

Under Muqāʿis the sources name houses including Minqar and ʿUbayd, and the arrangement of the rest varies. What is consistent across the books is the pairing itself: Saʿd is handled as Muqāʿis and al-Buṭūn, and a section of Saʿd is placed under one heading or the other rather than listed flat.

Homeland

With the rest of Saʿd, the sections of Muqāʿis are placed in eastern Najd along the Dahnāʾ and towards al-Yamāma, and afterwards among the Tamīmī settlement of Iraq.

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.