Masrūḥ

Overview

Masrūḥ — written مسروح — is reported as one of the two great divisions into which Ḥarb is usually described as falling, the other being Banū Sālim. Its country is placed in the Ḥijāz: about Medina and westward from it toward the coastal plain, and along the roads and waters between. Under Masrūḥ the reports place a number of further sections, Banū ʿAmr among them. This page describes a historical division as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root s-r-ḥ for turning livestock out to graze: al-sarḥ is the herd sent out in the morning, saraḥa is to send them out or to go out with them, and al-masraḥ is the place where they pasture. Masrūḥ has the form of a passive participle from that root, and it is also recorded as a personal name. The lexicon explains the word; it does not say why a division of people came to be called by it, and this reference does not turn a root into an account of a naming.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites do not document Masrūḥ. The division of Ḥarb into Masrūḥ and Banū Sālim belongs to reports of a period later than all six of them, and none of them describes the tribe in those terms. Yāqūt can be cited for Medina and the Ḥijāzī country and its waters, and al-Qalqashandī wrote about the Arab tribes of the Mamluk centuries in the Ḥijāz — but where a work is cited here it is cited for the place or for what it actually says, never for this division, and the citation notes make that plain. What is reported about Masrūḥ comes from oral tradition and from modern writing outside the permitted sources. The page records a name and a reported country, not a descent.

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.