Rūqah

Overview

Rūqah — written روقة, and also written روق — is reported as the second of the two divisions into which ʿUtaybah is usually described as falling, alongside Barqā. Its country is placed in Najd and westward toward the Ḥijāz, in the high country around al-Ṭāʾif and the desert margins east of it. This page describes a historical section as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root r-w-q for the horn of an animal, for the first and best part of a thing — the rawq of youth is its beginning — and for al-ruwāq, the front of a tent, the part that faces whoever approaches. That is the range of the word in the lexicon. It is not an account of the section's naming, and Ibn Manẓūr does not offer one: a tribal name and a lexical root may share a shape without the one explaining the other, and this reference does not turn the second into a story about the first.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites do not document Rūqah. Ibn Ḥazm and al-Qalqashandī wrote about the Arab tribes of their own centuries, and the present arrangement of ʿUtaybah and its divisions is later than either of them; Yāqūt gives places, al-Hamdānī gives Yemen, and neither names this section. What is reported about Rūqah comes from oral tradition and from modern writing outside this reference's 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.