Webb, Peter

Al-Azd was one of the largest lineage groups in pre-modern Arabia. It was counted amongst the Yamāniyya (southern Arab tribes) and genealogists traced its sub-tribes to Oman and to the ʿAsīr and Ḥijāz regions of southwest Arabia. Given the vast geographical spread of al-Azd’s co…

Kaʿb b. Mālik al-Anṣārī (d. 50/670 or 53/673) was a poet from the Banū Salima branch of the Khazraj and an early convert of the Anṣār (Medinan Companions of the Prophet). Kaʿb’s birthdate is unknown but it appears he was an adult when Muḥammad emigrated to Yathrib (1/622), since…

Kalb b. Wabara was a major Arabian lineage group of the Quḍāʿa. Predominantly camel-breeding pastoralists, the Kalb constituted powerful clans in the deserts between Syria and Iraq in pre-Islamic times, and were a key power-broking faction in the Umayyad era. Their lands were st…

Iram is an ancient Arabian name most commonly associated in modern writing with a lost city in southeastern Arabia, the capital of the pre-Islamic people of ʿĀd, whom God destroyed for their disbelief (Cobb, 2:559; Clapp). The meaning of “Iram” has, however, undergone a complex …

Bakr b. Wāʾil is one of the largest lineage groups of the “Northern Arabs” in Muslim-era genealogies. At the dawn of Islam, the sub-tribes of the Bakr b. Wāʾil lived in the area between the desert frontier in central Iraq and al-Yamāma in the Arabian Peninsula. Like most super-t…