Barqā

Overview

Barqā — written برقا, and commonly vowelled Barqā — is reported as one of the two divisions into which ʿUtaybah is usually described as falling, the other being Rūqah. Its country is placed in Najd and along the marches where Najd meets the Ḥijāz, in the high country about al-Ṭāʾif and eastward from it. That is what the reports say, and this page says no more than the reports do: it describes a historical section as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root b-r-q for lightning and for brightness, and gives al-burqa and al-barqāʾ for rough ground whose earth is mixed with stones and sand. Yāqūt's dictionary of places is full of that word — a long series of spots called al-Burqa and Barqāʾ, told apart only by what follows the name. The lexicon explains the word and the place-book locates the places; neither explains why a people came to be called by it, and neither mentions this section.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites — Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī, Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr and Ibn Khaldūn — do not document Barqā. The section's present shape is later than all of them by centuries, and what is reported about it comes from oral tradition and from modern writing that lies outside the sources this reference is permitted to use. The page therefore records the name, the country it is reported in, and the tribe it is reported under. It does not record a descent, and nothing on it should be read as one.

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.