Zughba

Overview

Zughba is entered as one of the branches of Banū Hilāl, who are reckoned to ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa of Hawāzin — as reported, and the genealogists differ over the intermediate names. It is named beside Riyāḥ and al-Athbaj so consistently in Ibn Khaldūn's account of the movement west that a report about one of the three often has to be read against the other two. This page describes a historical tribe and makes no claim about any modern family.

Recorded country

The distinguishing thing the sources say about Zughba is where it ended up. Riyāḥ is placed in Ifrīqiya; Zughba is carried further west, into the high plains of the central Maghrib, and the sections named under it are located there and along the desert edge behind them. The reports give this as a movement over generations rather than a single arrival, and they do not agree on when any one section reached where it is said to have settled.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root z-gh-b for down and soft hair: al-zaghab is the fine hair or feather that first appears, and a bird or a child may be described from it. That is what the lexicon gives for the word. It does not derive the tribal name from it, and neither does this page.

In the genealogical tradition

The sections named under Zughba in the accounts of the Maghrib run to a long list, and the lists differ from telling to telling — a name given as a son in one is a grandson in another, and a section placed under Zughba in one account is placed under a sister branch in the next. Ibn Ḥazm and al-Qalqashandī record Hilāl and its branches as Arabian genealogy; Ibn Khaldūn records what the branches did after they left. The two kinds of report answer different questions and should not be run together.

On lineage

This page describes a historical tribe as the classical sources record it, and makes no claim about any modern family. Branch lists and affiliations are given as reported, and the genealogists differ among themselves. Nothing here 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.