Labīd (the Sulamī branch)

Overview

Labīd is entered among the branches of Banū Sulaym in the accounts of the Arab movement west of the fifth century AH, named beside Dabbāb among the Sulamī groups that stopped in the eastern part of the North African coast rather than continuing west with the Hilālī branches. Banū Sulaym are reckoned to Qays ʿAylān under Muḍar, with their old country the ḥarrah land of the northern Ḥijāz — as reported, and the genealogists differ over the chain. This page describes a historical tribe and makes no claim about any modern family.

A tribe, and a man of another tribe

This name has to be kept apart from a famous bearer of it. Labīd ibn Rabīʿa is one of the best known of the early Arab poets, and he is a man of Banū ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa, of Hawāzin — not of Sulaym, and not connected to this branch. He is a person; this page is about a group. Because the poet is met far more often in books than the branch is, a reader who searches the name will mostly find him, and the two are regularly run together in writing that is not paying attention. They should not be. The name is besides an ordinary personal name in Arabic, borne by men of several tribes, so an occurrence of it in a text is not by itself a reference to either.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root l-b-d for sticking and matting together: labada, to cleave to a place and not leave it, al-libd and al-libda for felted wool, and the same root for a lion's mane where the hair is matted. The word for a man is given as a byname on that sense. The lexicon explains the word; it does not derive either the man's name or the branch's from it, and the derivation stories the later compilers attach to names are transmitted explanation rather than record.

Recorded country

The country given for this branch is the eastern coast country of the Maghrib and the steppe behind it, the region the Arabic geographers call Barqa, with the reports naming its sections there and westward toward Ifrīqiya. It is desert country and the sections are described as moving in it, so a report placing one in a district does not fix it there. The lists of sections differ, and a section given under Labīd in one telling is given under a neighbouring branch in another.

On lineage

This page describes a historical tribe as the classical sources record it, and makes no claim about any modern family. Branch lists and affiliations are given as reported, and the genealogists differ among themselves. Nothing here 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.