Sinjārah

Overview

Sinjārah — written سنجارة — is named as one of the main sections into which Shammar is described as falling, its country placed in the mountain country of northern Najd and, in later reports, in the open country running north toward the Jazīra and Iraq. This page describes a historical section as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

The name, and a place of a similar name

Yāqūt describes Sinjār, a town of the Jazīra under a well-known mountain, with its history, its waters and its people — one of the fuller notices in his dictionary of places. The tribal name Sinjārah is close to it in shape, and that closeness has been made into an etymology by later writers. This reference does not make it into one. Yāqūt writes about the town; he says nothing about any section of this name, and a resemblance between a place-name and a tribal name may be borrowing in either direction, coincidence, or nothing at all. Where the sources are silent about the reason for a name, the honest entry is that the reason is not known.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites do not document Sinjārah as a section of Shammar. The arrangement in which the name appears is later than all six of them; what is reported about it comes from oral tradition and from modern writing outside the sources this reference is permitted to use. Yāqūt is cited below for the town of Sinjār, and the citation note makes clear that it is the place being cited and not the section; the same applies to any citation for the country of northern Najd. The page records the name and the country reported for it, and records no 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.