Banū Sālim

Overview

Banū Sālim is reported as one of the two great divisions into which Ḥarb is usually described as falling, alongside Masrūḥ. Its country is placed in the Ḥijāz, about Medina and the country east and north of it, along the roads and waters of that region. This page describes a historical division as reported and makes no claim about any modern family — and here the caution has to be stated twice over, because of the name itself.

A name that identifies nothing on its own

Sālim is among the commonest names an Arab ancestor can carry, and the books are accordingly full of groups called Banū Sālim: under different tribes, in different regions, in different centuries, with no relation to one another beyond an ancestor who happened to bear a very ordinary name. The classical genealogists themselves enter more than one Banū Sālim, in the Ḥijāz and elsewhere, and they are not this division. A group called Banū Sālim in one book is therefore no evidence at all about a group of the same name in another. This is the single most useful thing this page can say. Anyone matching a family or a record to the name must do it on other evidence, because the name carries none.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root s-l-m for soundness and safety from harm: salima is to be unhurt and whole, and al-salāma is that condition. Sālim is the active participle, and it has been among the favoured Arabic personal names since before Islam — which is exactly why it is useless as an identifier here. The lexicon explains the word and not the naming.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites do not document this division of Ḥarb. The description of the tribe as falling into Banū Sālim and Masrūḥ belongs to reports later than all six of them. Yāqūt can be cited for Medina and the Ḥijāzī country as places, and it is the place that is cited, not the division. What is reported about Banū Sālim of Ḥarb comes from oral tradition and from modern writing outside the permitted sources. The page records the name and the reported country, and no 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.