Banū Umayya

Overview

Banū Umayya is a house of Quraysh at Mecca, reckoned by the genealogists to Umayya ibn ʿAbd Shams ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Quṣayy — which makes it, in the sources' own reckoning, a cousin house to Banū Hāshim through their common ancestor ʿAbd Manāf. In the division of Quraysh into the Muṭayyabūn and the Aḥlāf, the accounts place ʿAbd Shams and Nawfal on one side and Hāshim and al-Muṭṭalib on the other. This page describes a historical house and makes no statement about any modern family, surname or ruling line.

The name

Umayya is a diminutive in form, on the pattern of fuʿayla, and the lexicographers record it among the proper names of men without agreeing on what it is the diminutive of. Where a name's derivation is unsettled in the dictionaries, the honest course is to give the pattern and stop, rather than to choose one explanation and present it as the meaning.

Branches as reported

Ibn Ḥazm divides the sons of Umayya into two groups the genealogists name constantly: al-ʿAnābis and al-Aʿyāṣ. From the first, through Ḥarb ibn Umayya, the historians trace the line they call Sufyānī; from the second, through Abū al-ʿĀṣ, the line they call Marwānī. These two are the lines the historians name for the caliphate at Damascus and afterwards in al-Andalus. They are recorded here as historical lines in historical sources, and no modern family, surname or ruling house is attached to them on this page.

A name borne outside Quraysh

Umayya was also a personal name among other Arabs — the sources name Umayya ibn Abī al-Ṣalt, whom they reckon to Thaqīf, a different tribe entirely. The name by itself therefore attributes nobody to this house, and the nisba built from it is subject to the same caution as any other.

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.