ʿUdhra

Overview

ʿUdhra is reckoned by the genealogists to ʿUdhra ibn Saʿd Hudhaym ibn Zayd ibn Layth ibn Sawd ibn Aslum ibn al-Ḥāf ibn Quḍāʿah, which puts it in the same cluster of Quḍāʿī tribes as Juhayna, Nahd and Jarm, all traced to Zayd ibn Layth in the standard arrangement. Its diyār are placed in the country north of Medina — Wādī al-Qurā and the settlements along the road toward Taymāʾ and the Ḥijāz marches. The nisba recorded for it is al-ʿUdhrī. This page describes a historical tribe and makes no statement about any modern family.

In the sources

ʿUdhra is unusual among the tribes in this reference in that its fame is literary rather than military. The love poetry of the first Islamic century associated with the tribe — chaste, unconsummated, held to the point of death — became a recognised type, and the adjective ʿUdhrī came to name the type itself, so that later critics could speak of ʿUdhrī love without meaning the tribe at all. Jamīl ibn Maʿmar, known by the name of the woman his verse addresses, is the poet the sources most often name for it. The anecdotal material around this is very large and very literary: it is adab, transmitted for its beauty and its moral, and it should be read as that rather than as documentation of the tribe's affairs.

Reading the name

The lexicographers treat the root ʿ-dh-r as an ordinary one, with the sense of excuse and exculpation running through most of its words. The literary term did not come from the root but from the tribal name, which is the reverse of what a reader usually assumes; and because the term travelled so far from the tribe, al-ʿUdhrī in a later book may be a literary description rather than a genealogical statement. As with any nisba, it may equally mark descent, alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and the compilers say which only when they know.

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.