Arab tribes

History, branches, and homelands of Arab tribes.

• Bani Tamim

  One of the largest and most storied Arab tribes of the classical genealogical tradition, long associated with Najd.

• Banī Taym ibn Murra

  A Qurashī clan reckoned to Taym ibn Murra ibn Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy — and one of the most repeated names in Arab genealogy, so the nisba al-Taymī is shared widely.

• Banī Thaʿlaba

  A name borne by more than one unrelated group — in Bakr, in Ghaṭafān, and elsewhere; the sources keep them apart.

• Bani Yas

  The tribal confederation of the Abu Dhabi region, historically based between the Liwa oasis and the coast.

• Banī Zayd

  A Najdī tribe long settled in the towns of al-Washm and al-Maḥmal.

• Banī ʿAdī ibn Kaʿb

  A Qurashī clan reckoned to ʿAdī ibn Kaʿb ibn Luʾayy, brother of Murra and Huṣayṣ, and counted with the Aḥlāf in the Meccan blocs.

• Banū al-Buṭūn

  The collective name for the sections of Saʿd ibn Zayd Manāt not placed under Muqāʿis — and a name written exactly like the ordinary word for tribal sections.

• Banū al-Dayyān

  The chiefly house of al-Ḥārith ibn Kaʿb at Najrān, whose name is a title of office rather than a personal name.

• Banū al-Dīl (of ʿAbd al-Qays)

  A section of ʿAbd al-Qays on the al-Qaṭīf coast — and one of a set of names, al-Dīl, al-Duʾal and al-Diʾl, that the genealogists keep carefully apart and later

• Banū al-Ḥārith ibn al-Khazraj

  A section of al-Khazraj at Medina — and a name that fits two distinct houses, one Khazrajī and one Awsī, because two ancestors were called al-Khazraj.

• Banū al-Ḥārith ibn Fahm

  A group the genealogists place in Qays, under Muḍar, and not among the branches of Khuzāʿah — and one dot in the script separates Fahm from Fihr.

• Banū al-Ḥuddān

  An Azdī section the genealogists reckon to Azd, recorded in ʿUmān and Baṣra — and a name borne by more than one group.

• Banū al-Muṣṭaliq

  A branch reckoned to Khuzāʿah whose name is a nickname, not a personal name — al-Muṣṭaliq, the one who raised his voice.

• Banū al-Naḍīr

  One of the three Jewish tribes recorded at Yathrib, holders of strongholds and palm-groves in the country of Medina, and recorded as leaving for Khaybar and the

• Banū al-Najjār

  A section of al-Khazraj at Medina, reckoned to Taym al-Lāt ibn Thaʿlaba, called al-Najjār. A historical section — the common family name al-Najjār attributes no

• Banū al-Rāʾish

  The house named for al-Rāʾish, whom the akhbār make the first of the Ḥimyarī Tubbaʿ — narrative material, and the sources are read as such.

• Banū al-ʿAnbar

  A Tamīmī house the genealogists reckon to ʿAmr ibn Tamīm, met in the old books under the contracted form Balʿanbar.

• Banū al-ʿAtīk

  An Azdī section whose nisba al-ʿAtakī fills the biographical literature of Baṣra and Khurāsān.

• Banū Arḥab

  A division of Bakīl of Hamdān north-east of Sanaa, whose name the lexicographers preserve in al-arḥabiyya, the riding camels the poets attributed to it.

• Banū Bishr

  A section reported under Qaḥṭān in the south of Najd — and a name borne by more than one group, since Bishr is a common personal name and divisions called by it

• Banū Dārim

  One of the best known sections of Banū Tamīm in the genealogical literature, placed under Ḥanẓala and associated with Najd.

• Banū Ḥajūr

  A division reckoned to Ḥāshid of Hamdān in the western highlands of Yemen, whose name the geographers gave to a whole mikhlāf.

• Banū Ḥanẓala

  The widest of the divisions of Banū Tamīm in the genealogists' arrangement — under it they place Dārim, Yarbūʿ and the group called al-Barājim.

• Banū Ḥāritha

  A house of al-Aws at Medina, of the group called al-Nabīt — and a name that appears twice in the same genealogy, once as the father of both Anṣārī tribes.

• Banū Hāshim

  A house of Quraysh at Mecca, reckoned by the genealogists to Hāshim ibn ʿAbd Manāf, and recorded holding the pilgrim offices of siqāya and rifāda. A historical

• Banū Ḥassān

  A section reported by Ibn Khaldūn under Banū Maʿqil, in the far west and the desert south of it. What is reported of the name after his lifetime lies outside th

• Banū Hilāl

  The tribe of the great westward migration, and of the epic cycle built around it.

• Banū Ḥimmān

  A house the genealogists place under Saʿd ibn Zayd Manāt of Tamīm, recorded in the books with little beyond its place in the chain.

• Banū Hināʾa

  One of the sections most consistently counted to Mālik ibn Fahm among the Azd of ʿUmān.

• Banū Ḥushaysh

  A Hamdānī people of the district immediately east and north-east of Sanaa, whose name the geography carries as the name of the district itself.

• Banū Jābir

  A name borne by more than one unrelated group, formed from the common personal name Jābir. Groups called by it arise independently, and the shared name is not e

• Banū Jadhīma (of ʿAbd al-Qays)

  A section of ʿAbd al-Qays on the eastern coast — and one of several unrelated groups and men called Jadhīma, in Kināna and in the accounts of al-Ḥīra. The name

• Banū Jahḍam

  An Azdī section whose nisba al-Jahḍamī is familiar from the transmitters of Baṣra.

• Banū Jarm

  A tribal name the genealogists record for more than one group — a Jarm reckoned to Quḍāʿah and a Jarm named among Ṭayyiʾ.

• Banū Jusham

  A Hawāzinī line reported beside ʿĀmir rather than beneath it — and a name also borne by unrelated groups in Taghlib and among the Khazraj.

• Banū Kaʿb ibn ʿAmr

  The largest reported division of Khuzāʿah — and one of at least four unrelated tribal names built on Kaʿb.

• Banū Kharūṣ

  A tribe reported in the western Ḥajar of ʿUmān, in the valley that carries the same name, and commonly reckoned of the Azd. A historical tribe recorded here by

• Banū Kilāb

  A large branch of Banū ʿĀmir in Najd — and a name that unvowelled writing constantly confuses with the unrelated Kalb of Quḍāʿah.

• Banū Makhzūm

  A house of Quraysh which the genealogists branch off above Quṣayy, at Murrah ibn Kaʿb, and record holding the qubba and the aʿinna among the Meccan offices. His

• Banū Mālik ibn Fahm

  The house the accounts of the Omani Azd turn on, and the ancestor to whom Hināʾa, Salīma, Farāhīd and Maʿwala are counted.

• Banū Mālik ibn Ḥanẓala

  A Tamīmī house of the Ḥanẓala line, from which the genealogists reckon Dārim — and a caution about how often the name Mālik repeats.

• Banū Maʿqil

  The Arab group that Ibn Khaldūn treats at greatest length among those that moved furthest west and south, into the far Maghrib and the desert beyond it. He repo

• Banū Minqar

  A section of Banū Tamīm on the limb of Saʿd ibn Zayd Manāt rather than that of Ḥanẓala — the Minqarī nisba of Baṣra.

• Banū Muḥārib (of ʿAbd al-Qays)

  A section of ʿAbd al-Qays on the al-Qaṭīf coast, and not the Muḥārib of Qays — Muḥārib ibn Khaṣafa in Najd is an unrelated tribe of the same name. Keeping the t

• Banū Mujāshiʿ

  A section of Dārim of Banū Tamīm, remembered above all through the poet al-Farazdaq and the naqāʾiḍ of Baṣra.

• Banū Muqāʿis

  One of the two halves into which the genealogists divide Saʿd ibn Zayd Manāt — its name recorded as a byname meaning one who hung back from an alliance.

• Banū Nahd

  A Quḍāʿī tribe reckoned to Zayd ibn Layth beside Juhayna and Jarm, and one of the northern tribes the sources follow southwards into Yemen.

• Banū Nahshal

  A section of Dārim of Banū Tamīm, brother-line to Mujāshiʿ — and a name also borne as an ordinary personal name, so the nisba alone proves nothing.

• Banū Nawfal

  The least written about of the four houses the genealogists record for ʿAbd Manāf, and the one the compilers name a genealogist of Quraysh from. Historical; no

• Banū Numayr

  A son of ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa recorded in Najd, later in the upland Jazīra — and a name written exactly like the word for sweet water.