Banū al-Ḥārith ibn Fahm

Overview

Banū al-Ḥārith ibn Fahm are placed by the genealogists under Fahm ibn ʿAmr ibn Qays ʿAylān, which sets them in Qays and so under Muḍar, on the ʿAdnānī side of the usual scheme. Fahm and ʿAdwān are named as brothers in those chains. The genealogists do not reckon them a branch of Khuzāʿah, and the fact that the two names are sometimes handled together in later lists is the reason this page exists. This page describes a historical group and makes no statement about any modern family.

Three things this name is confused with

Fahm and Fihr differ by a single dot in the Arabic script, and the two nisbas built on them, al-Fahmī and al-Fihrī, are routinely swapped in print. Fihr ibn Mālik stands in the Qurashī chain as the genealogists arrange it; Fahm ibn ʿAmr is placed in Qays. They are recorded as different men in different tribes, and no amount of similarity in spelling brings them together.

Banū al-Ḥārith ibn Fahm must also be held apart from the Banū al-Ḥārith ibn Kaʿb, the group the sources call Balḥārith, who are reckoned to Madhḥij in the country of Najrān and fall on the Qaḥṭānī side as that scheme is usually drawn. The two names look alike in a citation and share nothing else.

And al-Ḥārith itself is among the most common of Arab personal names, from a root that Ibn Manẓūr glosses as tilling and, by extension, earning and working for gain. Banū al-Ḥārith consequently appears independently in many genealogies that the books keep separate, and a bare Banū al-Ḥārith in a source has not yet identified anyone.

Homelands

The sources associate Fahm with the mountain country toward al-Ṭāʾif and the passes running down to Tihāma, with Hudhayl and ʿAdwān as neighbours in that district, and Yāqūt records watering places and localities attributed to them there. Fahm is also remembered in the reports of the brigand poets, the ṣaʿālīk, and the poet known as Taʾabbaṭa Sharrā is attributed to it in those accounts.

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.