Tribes of Arabia

Arab genealogical tradition

• Al-Arab al-Ba'ida, "The Extinct Arabs", were an ancient group of tribes of prehistory that included the ‘Aad, the Thamud, the Tasm, the Jadis, the Imlaq, and others. The Jadis and the Tasm are said to have been exterminated by genocide. The Qur'an records that disappearance of the 'Aad and Thamud came of their decadence. Recent archaeological excavations have uncovered inscriptions which reference 'Iram, once a major city of the 'Aad.
• The Arab genealogies agree the original pure Arabs, "Al-Arab al-Ariba", came from Yemen and were descended from Ya‘rub bin Yashjub bin Qahtan, a descendant of Hud and were Qahtanite Arabs.
• According to this tradition, ‘Adnani Arabs were the progeny of Ishmael, the firstborn son of the patriarch Abraham, of the Jurhum tribe. The Hawazin tribe and the Quraysh tribe are considered ‘Adnani Arabs. Much of the lineage provided before Ma'ad relies on biblical genealogy, so questions persist concerning the accuracy of this segment of Adnanite Arab genealogy. According to Parolin, the Adnanites are believed to be the descendants of Ishmael through Adnan but the traditional Adnanite lineage doesn't match the biblical line exactly. According to Arab tradition, the Adnanites are called Arabised because it is believed that Ishmael was speaking Hebrew and he got married from a Qahtanite Yemeni woman and learnt Arabic from her. Therefore, the Adnanites are descendants of Abraham. According to Parolin, Modern historiography "unveiled the lack of inner coherence of this genealogical system and demonstrated that it finds insufficient matching evidence".

  The rules of the seventy