Banū Saʿd ibn Zayd Manāt

Overview

Saʿd ibn Zayd Manāt is reckoned by the genealogists as one of the largest divisions of Banū Tamīm, and much of what the classical books record about Tamīm in eastern Najd is recorded under his name. Ibn Ḥazm and al-Qalqashandī both treat Saʿd as a house with houses inside it rather than as a single section, and both organise their accounts of it around a pair of collective names that recur so often they read almost as proper nouns: Muqāʿis and al-Buṭūn. This page describes a historical tribe as the early writers set it down, and makes no claim about any modern family.

A name borne by more than one people

Saʿd was among the commonest of Arab personal names, and Banū Saʿd is accordingly borne by groups the sources treat as entirely separate — a Saʿd reckoned to Hawāzin, this Saʿd reckoned to Tamīm, and others besides. The full form of the name is what does the work of telling them apart: Saʿd ibn Zayd Manāt ibn Tamīm is not the Saʿd of Hawāzin, and a source that writes only Banū Saʿd has not told the reader which is meant. The genealogists themselves usually give the whole chain for this reason, and a reader who shortens it undoes the distinction they were at pains to preserve.

Branches as reported

Under Saʿd the sources place Muqāʿis, recorded as the byname of a man of Saʿd who is said to have held back from an alliance, and al-Buṭūn, a collective name for the remaining sections. Houses named within these include Minqar, Ḥimmān and ʿAwf, but the arrangement differs from book to book, and the lists are not the same length in any two of them.

Homeland

The geographers place the diyār of Saʿd in eastern Najd, along the sands of al-Dahnāʾ and towards the approaches of al-Yamāma and the old coast of al-Baḥrayn. After the early conquests a large part of Tamīm, Saʿd among it, is recorded settling in the garrison towns of Iraq, which is why so much Tamīmī genealogy was written down in Basra.

On lineage

The branches and affiliations set out above are given as reported by the classical genealogists, who differ among themselves: the ordering of the sections, and which section is reckoned under which, are not settled in the sources. Nothing on this page establishes any living family's descent — a shared name may reflect descent, alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and the sources say which only when they know. This page describes a historical tribe as the early writers recorded it, and makes no claim about any modern family.