Arab tribes

History, branches, and homelands of Arab tribes.

• Quḍāʿah

  A large early confederation whose placement — ʿAdnānī or Qaḥṭānī — the genealogists never settled.

• Quraysh

  The tribe of Mecca and its sanctuary — the most fully documented tribe in Arab genealogy.

• Rabīʿa

  The other great ʿAdnānī grouping, associated with eastern Arabia and the routes toward Iraq.

• Riyāḥ of Banū Hilāl

  The branch of Banū Hilāl that Ibn Khaldūn places at the front of the Arab groups recorded in Ifrīqiya after the westward movement of the fifth century AH. It is

• Rufaydah

  A section reported under Qaḥṭān. The classical genealogists give a Rufaydah under Madhḥij in Yemen, and the name is borne by other groups besides: this referenc

• Ruhāʾ

  A Madhḥijī section whose nisba, al-Ruhāwī, is shared with a town of the Jazīra — so the same word points two entirely different ways.

• Rūqah

  A division reported under ʿUtaybah, in Najd and toward the Ḥijāz. A historical section recorded here by name: the classical works this reference cites do not do

• Salīḥ

  A Quḍāʿī tribe of the Syrian marches, reckoned to Ḥulwān ibn ʿImrān, and recorded as holding the leading position there before Ghassān.

• Saybān

  A group reported in Ḥaḍramawt, in the western uplands and the wadis descending from them. A historical name recorded here as reported: the classical works this

• Saʿd al-ʿAshīra

  The son of Madhḥij from whom the greater part of Madhḥij is counted, and one of the few ancestral names the sources never give without its byname.

• Saʿd ibn Bakr

  A tribe reckoned to Hawāzin in the badiya between the Ḥijāz and Najd, whose name carries two of the commonest confusions in the genealogies.

• Shahrān

  A large tribe of the ʿAsīr highlands.

• Shammar

  A large and historically prominent Arabian tribe centered on the Ha'il region of northern Najd, with a wide range.

• Shammar Ṭōqa

  A named section reported under Shammar, in the Tigris country of al-ʿIrāq. This page is about the section and not about Shammar, which has its own page; the cla

• Shann

  The second of the two limbs of ʿAbd al-Qays — Shann ibn Afṣā — and the only tribal name of this coast that is also a live word in the lexicon and the subject of

• Shaybān

  The Bakr ibn Wāʾil section the historical accounts name most often, recorded from eastern Arabia up into al-Jazīra.

• Sinḥān

  A name reported both as a section of Qaḥṭān in the south of Najd and as a Yemeni group and district near Ṣanʿāʾ. This reference records both bearings and assert

• Sinjārah

  A section reported under Shammar in northern Najd and toward the Jazīra. Its name resembles that of the town of Sinjār, which the classical geographers describe

• Subay'

  An Arab tribe long associated with central Najd.

• Sufyān

  A Hamdānī division of the high country north of Sanaa, named in al-Hamdānī's survey. The name is borne by more than one group and is besides one of the commones

• Taghlib

  The Rabīʿa tribe set opposite Bakr in the pre-Islamic accounts, known for its poets.

• Tanūkh

  A name the sources treat as a confederation rather than a father — groups that settled together in lower Iraq and al-Baḥrayn and took a name meaning to stay.

• Taym al-Ribāb

  A tribe whose name is almost never written without its confederation attached — because at least three unrelated Tayms need telling apart.

• Ṭayyiʾ

  A great Qaḥṭānī tribe of the northern mountains, whose name the peaks of Aja and Salma still carry.

• Thaqif

  A classical Arab tribe of Taif in the Hijaz highlands, prominent from pre-Islamic times.

• Thawr

  A group reckoned among the Ribāb whose nisba, al-Thawrī, is better known than the tribe — and whose name is easily confused with a mountain and a common persona

• Tujīb

  A section of al-Sakūn of Kinda named for a mother rather than a father — one of the few Arab tribal names the genealogists derive from a woman. A historical tri

• Tūmān

  A section reported under Shammar in northern Najd and toward Iraq. The classical works this reference cites contain neither the name nor any explanation of it,

• Utaybah

  A large Arabian tribe historically associated with the highlands and plateaus between the Hijaz and Najd.

• Utub

  An Arab group whose twelfth-century AH migrations to Kuwait and Bahrain are a fixture of Gulf history.

• Wadāʿah

  A section reported under Qaḥṭān in the south of Najd. A closely similar name, Wādiʿah, is borne by a division of Hamdān in Yemen: the two are recorded separatel

• Wādiʿah

  A division entered among Hamdān in the north of Yemen, whose name the lexicographers take from ease and quiet — not from the wadīʿa, a thing left in trust.

• Wāʾil

  An ancestral name in the Rabīʿa line, from which Bakr and Taghlib are both reckoned.

• Wāʾilah

  A Hamdānī group of the north-eastern marches of Yemen, named with Dahm in that country. Not Wāʾil of Rabīʿah, a different name and a different stock.

• Wuld ʿAlī

  A section reported within ʿAnazah under Ḍanā Muslim, with its country reported about Khaybar and the northern Ḥijāz and northward into the Levant. The name is a

• Yāfiʿ

  A people of the broken uplands that rise inland from the southern coast toward Ḥaḍramawt, entered by the old books among the Ḥimyarite names of the Yemeni south

• Yam

  An Arab tribe of the Najran region in southwestern Arabia.

• Yām of Hamdān

  The name as the classical genealogists enter it among the divisions of Hamdān — a separate question from the tribe later recorded by the name, which has its own

• Yashkur

  One of the two lines from which Bakr ibn Wāʾil is reckoned, remembered for the Muʿallaqa poet al-Ḥārith ibn Ḥilliza.

• Zahran

  An Arab tribe historically associated with the highlands of southwestern Arabia, neighboring Ghamid.

• Zawbaʿ

  A section reported under Shammar, its country placed in Iraq and the Jazīra and, in earlier reports, in northern Najd. A historical section recorded here by nam

• Zubayd

  A Madhḥijī tribe of Yemen, later recorded widely in Iraq.

• Zubayd ibn Ṣaʿb

  The ancestral name at the head of Zubayd's chain in Madhḥij — and a place where the genealogists name more than one Zubayd and do not agree.

• Zughba

  A branch of Banū Hilāl recorded by Ibn Khaldūn among the Arab groups that moved west in the fifth century AH, and placed in the central Maghrib rather than in I

• ʿAbd al-Qays

  A large tribe the genealogists place under Rabīʿa, recorded in historic eastern Arabia — al-Baḥrayn, Hajar, al-Qaṭīf and al-Khaṭṭ — and remembered in the accoun

• ʿAbdah

  A section reported under Shammar, in the mountain country of northern Najd and, in later reports, northward into Iraq. A historical section recorded here by nam

• ʿAbs

  A Ghaṭafānī tribe of Najd, remembered through ʿAntara and the war of Dāḥis.

• ʿAdī ibn ʿAbd Manāt

  One of the groups the genealogists gather under al-Ribāb, and one of four unrelated lines that all answer to the name ʿAdī.

• ʿAdwān

  A Qaysī tribe recorded at al-Ṭāʾif before Thaqīf, remembered for its arbiter ʿĀmir ibn al-Ẓarib and for a name the genealogists read as an act of transgression.

• ʿAkk

  A tribe of the Yemeni Tihāma that the genealogists could never place — entered in the line of ʿAdnān by some and in the Azd by others, and the clearest case aft