Yashkur

Overview

Yashkur is recorded by the genealogists as Yashkur ibn Bakr ibn Wāʾil, and so as one of the two lines from which Bakr is reckoned — the other being ʿAlī ibn Bakr, under whom most of the tribe's remaining sections are placed. Their country is described alongside the rest of Bakr in eastern Arabia and the lands reaching toward Iraq, and later in the garrison towns of the conquests, where a great deal of what survives of their poetry and their reported history was written down.

The name repays a moment's attention, because it is not a noun. Yashkur is a verb in the imperfect — "he gives thanks" — from the root sh-k-r, which the lexicographers gloss as the recognition of a kindness and the spreading of it abroad; from the same root they record shakūr said of a beast that keeps its condition on scant pasture. The verb pattern is old and productive in Arab naming, alongside Yazīd, Yaʿmur and Yashjub, and a reader who expects every tribal name to be a noun will misparse it.

Yashkur is remembered above all for al-Ḥārith ibn Ḥilliza al-Yashkurī, whose ode is counted among the Muʿallaqāt and whom the transmitters connect with the long quarrel between Bakr and Taghlib. The name is also met attached to lines outside Bakr, and where that happens the genealogists treat the bearers separately rather than merging them. This page describes a historical tribe and makes no claim about any modern family.

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 (ṣarīḥ), alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and the sources usually say which only when they know.