Structure of Pre-Islamic Arab Tribes

Last updated: April 16th, 2025 at 1:54 pm · Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes

An Arab tribe was composed of all those individuals who were descended from a reputed common ancestor.  Here, the keyword is ‘reputed common ancestor’. The common ancestor of a tribe could be real or legendary.  Historians have figured out how the Roman authorities created four civic tribes out of fourteen at Palmyra in the 1^st century CE for administrative and cultic purposes. The separate ancestors of the previously existing fourteen tribes are documented in Palmyrian inscriptions.  Obviously, the ancestors of the newly created tribes were nominated.¹  It appears that a group of people happily adopted a legendary ancestor if it suited them politically.

A Safaitic inscription kept at Mafraq Museum in Jordan reads, “[Written] by Gzk son of S’ son of Gmm son of Qn’l son of Yḥm’l son of Mr’t son of Gryt son of ‘Zn son of Ḥrntt son of Tmn son of ‘Ḍr son of Ḥb son of Zm.”²  This is a thirteen-generational genealogy.  Knowing one’s genealogy was of utmost importance for an Arab to avail his tribal privileges.  Pride in long genealogies was cross-cultural.  A Nabatean inscription from 95 CE, written by a certain Wt’lh and found at Salkhad, mentions seven generations: wt’lh sone of Qṣyw son of ‘dynt son of ‘wt’[lh] son of ‘klbw son of Qṣyw.³  The trend continued to late antiquity.

These archaeological pieces of evidence establish that kinship was of primordial importance for the maintenance of tribal formations.  Our modern research on Arab tribes confirms it.  In one genetic study of two Arab tribes of Sinai, sixty-five out of sixty-seven males tested had the same haplotype.[/note]Robert G. Hoyland.   Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam, (New York: Routledge, 2001), 251.[/note]

However, kinship of all members of a tribe was not necessarily shared, even in situations where a tribe comprised of real descendants of one person.  We know sometimes people not belonging to a tribe were added to it.  Whence they gained decent from the tribal ancestor in name.  For example, ‘Auf bin Lu’ayy was a Meccan Quraysh.  His clan abandoned him while passing through the district of Ghatafan (Ghaṭafān غَطَفان) tribe in a commercial caravan.    A man of Ghatafan gave him a wife and admitted him in the Ghatafan tribe as a blood-brother.⁴  It means a tribe could comprise of actual descendants of an ancestor – full members, and those who attained ancestry in name – affiliated members.

The principal social distinction within a tribe was between full members and affiliated members/dependents.  There were many ways to become affiliated member of a tribe.  Individuals or groups escaping vengeance, impoverishment or in need of support for some other reason were sometimes admitted into a tribe as affiliate member.  Such Protégés were called jīrān (جيران).   Similarly, sometimes an Arab was enslaved in war (‘abd عَبد).  After being manumitted and adopted he could be incorporated in the tribe as member if he wished to do so, though most preferred to remain in the tribe of their birth.  Lastly, there were allies (ḥulafa حلفاء), individuals or groups spending a long time with a foreign tribe and ultimately developing a protective relationship with a native host tribe.⁵

A tribe was not apt in taking affiliate members.  An incidence narrated by Tabari (d. 923 CE, Ṭabarī طَبَرِى, an indispensable historian of pre-Islam) exemplifies how damn difficult was it to attain membership of a respectable tribe.  “When [the Iranian commander] Basak son of Mahbudh began work on [the fortress of] Mushaqqar [in east Arabia], he was told ‘these workmen will not remain in this place unless they are provided with womenfolk’ …. So he had whores brought for them from lower Iraq …. the workmen and the women married each other and begat children, and, they soon constituted the majority of the population of the city of Hajr.  They spoke Arabic and called themselves after [the tribe of] ‘Abd al-Qays.  When Islam came, they said to ‘Abd al-Qays: ‘you know well our numerical strength, our formidable equipment and weapons, and our great proficiency, so incorporate us among you and let us intermarry with you’.  ‘Abd al-Qays responded: ‘no, remain as you are, as our dependent brethren’.  But one ‘Abdi said; ‘people of ‘Abd al-Qays! Follow my advice and accept them, for the likes of these are highly desirable’.  Another said; ‘Have you no shame? Are you telling us to receive a people whose origins and ancestry are as you know?”⁶

Safaitic inscriptions, which disappeared after 4^th century CE, are rich in genealogical information.  They provide a window for study of tribal structure of nomads and kinship relations of individual members.⁷

Further Reading

History of Islam, Social Structure of Pre-Islamic Arabs, https://historyofislam.org/social-structure-of-pre-islamic-arabs/

Footnotes

1. For the four tribe of Palmyra see:  Daniel Schlumberger, “Les quarter tribus de palmyre,” Syria 48 no. 1/2 (1971): 121 – 133.  For the detailed process of creation of administrative tribes see: Michat Gawlikowski, Tadmor – Palmyra: A Caravan City between East and West, (Crascow: IRSA, 2021), 24, 25, 29 – 32.
2. Abdul-Qadir al-Housan, “A selection of Safaitic inscriptions from Al-Mafraq, Jordan: II,” Arabian Epigraphic Notes 3 (2017): 33, inscription number 18, figure 14.
3. Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, Pars secunda, Tomus 1, (Paris: Reipublicae Typographeo, 1889), 208, 209.  Inscription numbers 183 and 184, TAB XXV.  See also: J. T. Milik, “Nouvelles inscriptions nabateennes,” Syria 35 no. 3/4 (1958): 227 – 231.
4. Muhammad Ibn Ishaq,  The Life of Muhammad, Ed. and Trans. Alfred Guillaume, ( Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 42.
5. Robert G. Hoyland.   Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam, (New York: Routledge, 2001), 118.  For use of word mujāwir for a person who is under protection in pre-Islamic poetry of Ḥārith bin Wa’lah see: Abū Jā’far Muḥammad bin Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, The History of al- Ṭabarī. Vol. XXIII, ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater, trans. Martin Hinds (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 8.  The root of mujawir is jiran.
6. Abū Jā’far Muḥammad bin Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī, Vol. V, ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater, trans. C. E. Bosworth (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 291.
7. For a dedicated study of tribal and social structure of the people who generated Safaitic inscriptions see: Dorthea Rennestraum Alisoy, Affiliations carved in stone: An analysis of Kinship and Social Structure in the Safaitic Inscriptions, University of Bergen: Master’s Thesis, 2017.