Banū Riyāḥ

Overview

Riyāḥ ibn Yarbūʿ ibn Ḥanẓala is placed by the genealogists among Banū Tamīm, with the country of Yarbūʿ in Najd. The most useful thing this page can say is that the name is borne by more than one group, and that the sources keep them apart. A Riyāḥ is also recorded among Banū Hilāl of ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa, of Hawāzin — a separate line entirely — and it is that Riyāḥ, not the Tamīmī one, that the accounts of the westward movement of Banū Hilāl are concerned with. Modern writing merges the two regularly, and the nisba al-Riyāḥī is carried from both and from other origins besides. The script compounds the difficulty: Riyāḥ, Rabāḥ and Rayyāḥ are distinct names that unvowelled writing does not distinguish, so a bare occurrence in a text may not be this name at all. This page describes historical groups as the classical sources record them, and makes no claim about any modern family.

The name

Rīḥ, wind, is plural riyāḥ; Lisān al-ʿArab refers it to the root r-w-ḥ, the same root that carries rāḥa, rest, and rāʾiḥa, scent. Names formed on it are common, which is part of why the name arose independently in more than one place.

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 (ṣarīḥ), alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and the sources usually say which only when they know.