Banū Rawāḥah

Overview

Banū Rawāḥah — written بنو رواحة — are reported in the interior of ʿUmān, in the valleys of the mountain country and the settled ground below them, 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.

The name is borne by more than one group

Rawāḥah is an old name and not the property of one people. The classical genealogists record Banū Rawāḥah among the Khazraj of Yathrib — the house of ʿAbd Allāh b. Rawāḥah — and that is a wholly separate matter from the tribe reported in ʿUmān; Ibn Ḥazm and al-Qalqashandī treat the Yathribī house, not this one. Other groups called Rawāḥah are reported elsewhere as well. The name is a formation on a common root, and its recurrence is what such formations do; it is not evidence that the bearers are one stock.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root r-w-ḥ for the rawāḥ, the going in the latter part of the day, and for rūḥ and rāḥah, rest and relief, and for the wind's blowing. Rawāḥah is formed on it, as a personal name before it was a people's. 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

What the classical works record under this name is the Khazrajī house, not the Omani tribe. Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī, Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr and Ibn Khaldūn do not document Banū Rawāḥah of ʿUmān; al-Hamdānī describes ʿUmān and its Azd in general terms, and Yāqūt gives the places, 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 and the reported country, not 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.