Barīh

Overview

Barīh — written بريه, and also written برية by some who report it — is named as one of the divisions of Muṭayr, with its country placed in Najd and the open desert north and east of al-Qaṣīm. That is the whole of what this page asserts. It describes a historical section as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

The name

This reference does not explain the name, and will not guess at it. None of the six classical works it cites contains it, so there is no lexical entry to point to and no genealogist's account to report; the written form varies between بريه and برية in the reports themselves, which is a further reason not to build an etymology on a spelling that is not fixed. An honest blank is worth more here than a plausible derivation, because a plausible derivation, once written down, gets copied.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites do not document Barīh. They are earlier than the arrangement of Muṭayr in which the name appears, and none of them lists that tribe's divisions or its country in the terms modern reports use. What is said about Barīh comes from oral tradition and from later writing outside the permitted sources. The page therefore records the name and the region as reported, and records no descent at all.

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.