Banū Qurayẓa

Overview

Banū Qurayẓa are recorded as the third of the Jewish tribes of Yathrib, with Banū Qaynuqāʿ and Banū al-Naḍīr. Their dwellings are placed in the higher country south-east of Medina, in the valleys that carry the flood-water down toward the town, and the geographers name those places rather than describe the people. The sources record Qurayẓa, with al-Naḍīr, as bound by alliance to al-Aws. As with the other two, the genealogies of the Arab tribes give them no position: those books are organised around the ʿAdnānī and Qaḥṭānī lines, and what is recorded of Qurayẓa comes from the historical literature instead. This page describes a historical group and makes no statement about any modern family.

In the sources

The sīra and maghāzī literature records how the tribe's affair at Medina ended in the fifth year after the hijra, after the siege known as the Battle of the Trench. Those accounts belong to that literature, where they are set out at length and with variation between transmitters; they are not narrated here, and the reference confines itself to noting that the sources place the end of the tribe's presence at Medina in that year. Some genealogists pair Qurayẓa with al-Naḍīr as brother groups from a single ancestor, calling the two al-Kāhinān; others keep them separate.

Reading the name

The lexicographers refer qurayẓa to the root q-r-ẓ. Al-qaraẓ is the leaf of the acacia used for tanning hides, and a tanner working with it is a qarrāẓ; qurayẓa is the diminutive form of qaraẓa, a single such tree or leaf. Diminutives of this kind are common in Arab tribal names and carry no diminishing sense. Whether the group itself understood its name from this root, and whether the Jews of Yathrib were Israelite or Arab in descent, the classical writers report both views without settling either.

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.