Banū Qushayr

Overview

Qushayr is recorded as a son of Kaʿb ibn Rabīʿa ibn ʿĀmir, and Banū Qushayr as one of the four branches counted from him alongside ʿUqayl, al-Ḥarīsh and Jaʿda. Their diyār are placed with the rest of Banū ʿĀmir in Najd. Beyond that placement the classical genealogists say little more than that the branch stood among its brothers. This page describes a historical tribe and makes no claim about any modern family.

What the nisba shows

The relative adjective al-Qushayrī is formed from the tribal name in the ordinary way, and readers meet nisbas of this kind far more often than they meet the tribal name itself. What a nisba records, though, is what a writer called someone. It may follow descent; it may equally follow alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ); and once fixed it is inherited and carried wherever its bearer goes, long after any tie to the tribe's country has lapsed. Meeting the nisba in a source is therefore not the same as establishing a line, and this reference does not treat it as one.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr gives qishr as the covering of a thing — the rind, the husk, the outer garment — and Qushayr is the diminutive pattern built on that root. Diminutives were an ordinary way of forming Arabic personal names and carry no belittling sense in that use, as ʿUqayl and Numayr in the same house show.

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.