Last updated: April 16th, 2025 at 10:00 am · Est. Reading Time: < 1 minute
Genealogical classification of Arab tribes has no historical value. However, it has great political significance.
Early Islamic sources provide a genealogical classification of all Arab tribes. Scholars doubt their accuracy. The genealogies written in the post-Islamic period might reflect a reality of the present or the near past from the time of writing, but they are inaccurate about the remote past. Scholars are confident that those genealogical classifications are political and social rather than historical. The ascendants and descendants of the genealogical tree are political symbols rather than blood-based reality.1 Many cases of genealogical forgery for political purposes have been pointed out. For example, Mudar (Muḍar مَُضَر) and Rabi’a (Rabī’ah رَبِيعَه) rediscovered a common ancestor Nizar (Nizār نِزَار). Quda’a (Quḍā’ah قُضاعَه) became a descendant of Qahtan (Qaḥṭān قَحطان).2
Early Islamic Sources of Arab Tribal Classification
Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, ed. and Trans. Alfred Guillaume. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013. (First fifty pages)
Ibn Sa’d, Kitāb al-Tabaqāt al-Kabīr, ed. Eduard Sachau, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1940. (Only parts of the book are translated into English)
Baladhuri, Ansab al-Ashraf, ed. M. Hamidullah. Cairo: Dar al-Ma’arif, 1959. (No English translation available)
Further Reading
History of Islam, Social Structure of Pre-Islamic Arabs, https://historyofislam.org/social-structure-of-pre-islamic-arabs/