Juhayna ibn Zayd

Overview

This page treats one thing only: where the classical genealogists place Juhayna in the scheme of Quḍāʿah. The tribe as a subject — its country, its sections, its presence in the record — has its own page in this reference, and readers looking for that should go there. What is set out here is the reported line: Juhayna ibn Zayd ibn Layth ibn Sawd ibn Aslum ibn al-Ḥāf ibn Quḍāʿah, with Nahd, Jarm and Saʿd Hudhaym entered beside it as descendants of the same Zayd ibn Layth, and ʿUdhra below Saʿd Hudhaym. This is a historical arrangement recorded in books of genealogy, and it makes no statement about any modern family.

What the position means

Because Juhayna is entered under Quḍāʿah, everything unsettled about Quḍāʿah is unsettled about Juhayna. The sources never agreed whether Quḍāʿah belongs on the ʿAdnānī or the Qaḥṭānī side: some reckon it to Maʿadd, others place it under Ḥimyar, and the disagreement is old, documented, and was never resolved. A source that calls Juhayna Qaḥṭānī and a source that calls it ʿAdnānī are not contradicting each other about Juhayna; they are following different placements of Quḍāʿah above it. That is the single most useful thing to know about the position, and it is why the branch labels should be read as a scholarly ordering rather than as a record.

In the sources

The genealogists give the line in the form above with the usual variation in the lower links, and Yāqūt places the tribe's country on the Red Sea side of the Ḥijāz, in the coastal and inland districts between Yanbuʿ and Medina. The proverb that the surest news is with Juhayna is one of the best-known Arabic sayings and is attached to the tribe's name in the literature; like most proverbs it travelled far from whatever occasioned it, and it is repeated here as a saying, not as evidence of anything.

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.