Qays ʿAylān

Overview

Qays ʿAylān is reckoned to Muḍar, and in the classical arrangement it is one of the two great trunks under which the ʿAdnānī tribes are gathered, the other being Ilyās ibn Muḍar. Its diyār are placed in Najd and the upper Ḥijāz and the country between them. Almost every tribe named on this page, and several already in this reference — Hawāzin, Banū Sulaym, Ghaṭafān — are reckoned to it, which makes Qays less a tribe one belongs to than a heading under which the genealogists file a great many. This page describes a historical grouping and makes no statement about any modern family.

The name

The genealogists differ over ʿAylān itself. Some read it as the name of his father and write Qays ibn ʿAylān; some make it a byname carried by Qays; others report that it was the name of a horse or a dog of his, by which he came to be known. Ibn Ḥazm records the disagreement without settling it, and the entry is a fair sample of the field: explanations of a tribal name are usually more numerous than the evidence that would choose between them.

What is reckoned to it

Through Khaṣafa ibn Qays the sources reckon Hawāzin and Banū Sulaym, by way of ʿIkrima and Manṣūr, together with Muḥārib ibn Khaṣafa. Through Saʿd ibn Qays they reckon Ghaṭafān, and beneath it ʿAbs, Dhubyān, Fazāra and Ashjaʿ; and through Aʿṣur ibn Saʿd, Bāhila and Ghanī. Through ʿAmr ibn Qays they reckon ʿAdwān and Fahm. Thaqīf is the standing dispute: most place it in Hawāzin and so in Qays, while others refer it to Iyād — the sources differ, and neither reading is established here.

In the sources

After the conquests the name did work no genealogy had asked of it. In Syria, Iraq and Khurāsān the tribes settled into two political blocs, Qays against Yaman, and much of the Umayyad-period record of feud and faction is written in those terms. Ibn Khaldūn treats this kind of alignment under ʿaṣabiyya: group feeling attaches to a name, and the name then outlives whatever descent first gave rise to it.

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.