106-Surah-Quraysh.pdf

The Quraysh were a mercantile Arab tribe that historically inhabited and controlled Mecca and its Ka'aba. The Islamic prophet Muhammad was born into the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe. The Quraysh staunchly opposed Muhammad until converting to Islam en masse in 630 CE. Afterward, leadership of the Muslim community traditionally passed to a member of the Quraysh as was the case with the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid caliphs. Sources differ as to the etymology of Quraysh, with one theory holding that it was the diminutive form of qirsh (shark). The 9th-century genealogist Hisham ibn al-Kalbi asserted that there was no eponymous founder of Quraysh;rather, the name stemmed from taqarrush, an Arabic word meaning "a coming together" or "association". The nisba or surname of the Quraysh is Qurashi, though in the early centuries of Islam, most Qurayshi tribesmen were denoted by their specific clan instead of the tribe. Later, particularly after the 13th century, claimants of Qurayshi descent used the Qurashi surname. --- Updated: 2018-08-18