Banū Qaynuqāʿ

Overview

Banū Qaynuqāʿ are recorded as one of the three Jewish tribes of Yathrib, the town later called Medina, the other two being Banū al-Naḍīr and Banū Qurayẓa. What is known of them reaches us from the historical and lexical literature rather than from the genealogies of the Arab tribes, which are built around the ʿAdnānī and Qaḥṭānī lines and place these groups nowhere within them. The sources record Qaynuqāʿ as bound by alliance to al-Khazraj, while al-Naḍīr and Qurayẓa are recorded on the side of al-Aws — an alliance as the sources give it, which is a different thing from a descent. This page describes a historical group and makes no statement about any modern family.

In the sources

The lexicographers preserve the name of a market at Medina called the market of Banū Qaynuqāʿ, which is where a reader of the dictionaries rather than the histories is likely to meet it. The historical accounts record the tribe's departure from Medina in the second year after the hijra and name the Levant as the country it went to. Those accounts belong to the sīra and akhbār literature and reach us as transmitted narrative rather than as documented record; the compilers differ among themselves over the details of date and route, and nothing further is set out here.

Reading the name

Qaynuqāʿ is treated by the lexicons as a name taken into Arabic rather than a form built from an Arabic root, and it is recorded with more than one vowelling of the nūn. Whether the Jews of Yathrib were Israelite in descent or Arab groups who took the Jewish religion is a question the classical writers raise without settling: some report them as descendants of Israel, others reckon them Arabs by descent who changed religion. This reference records that the sources differ and does not choose between them.

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.