Qusayy and the Rise of Quraysh

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

Qusayy ibn Kilab is the star of Quraysh, the fifth grandfather of the Prophet ﷺ, called al-Quraysh al-Aṣghar, the Minor Quraysh, because he began the immediate ascent of the tribe, so that five generations later, when the Prophet ﷺ came, Quraysh stood at the pinnacle of their power. He lived around 400 CE, some hundred and seventy years before the Prophet's ﷺ birth.

❧Mecca in other hands

In his day Mecca was not held by his kin at all, but by the tribe of Khuzāʿah, another branch of the descendants of Ismāʿīl, not of the line of Fihr, the Quraysh. Khuzāʿah had themselves taken Mecca from the Jurhum, the ancient Arabs into whom Ismāʿīl had married; the Jurhum had begun overtaxing the people, so Khuzāʿah overthrew them and drove everyone out, including the descendants of Fihr, the original Quraysh, who were left living in scattered encampments a traveller's distance from the city. And as they were driven out, the Jurhum did a spiteful and dastardly deed: they buried and concealed the well of Zamzam, and no matter how Khuzāʿah dug and dug, they could not find it, for Allah had willed it lost. So for more than three hundred years the people of Mecca had no Zamzam, and were forced to dig distant wells and channel water in from the mountains, eking out an existence beside the House they would not leave.

❧How Qusayy took the city back

Ibn Isḥāq tells the long story of how Qusayy won it back, and it was a shrewd, tactical move: he married the daughter of the chief of Khuzāʿah. He then proved his skill over and above even the chief's own sons, so that when the father died and Qusayy was already within the family as a son-in-law, the people wanted Qusayy over the sons. From that footing he called in the scattered clans of his ancestor Fihr, the other Qurashī tribes, gathered them together (some say this gathering is the very reason they are called Quraysh), went to war with Khuzāʿah, distant cousins though they were, and expelled them. So Qusayy, the great-great-great-grandfather of the Prophet ﷺ, reclaimed Mecca for Quraysh; and it is from his day that the rise of Quraysh to power begins.

❧Dar al-Nadwa and the offices of the House

Qusayy then built the Dār al-Nadwa, the council house, the parliament of Mecca, where the men would gather to voice their opinions and decide their affairs, on the very ground the Prophet ﷺ himself would later know by that name. He took custody of the Kaʿbah and instituted the offices of its service, drawing up the list of responsibilities that would trickle down among his descendants: the keys of the House (ḥijābah), the watering of the pilgrims (siqāyah), the feeding and hospitality of the guests (rifādah), the banner, and Dār al-Nadwa itself. While he lived he held them all; then they were divided among his sons, and by the time of the Prophet ﷺ each clan held one, so that Banū ʿAbd al-Dār held the key of the Kaʿbah, and so on.

❧The guests of Allah

Above all, Qusayy began the institution of caring for the ḥujjāj, which had not existed before: free food and water for the pilgrims. Every Hajj he would stand and raise a fund, saying, "O people of Quraysh, Allah has honoured you with the care of His House, and these pilgrims are the guests of Allah, and they deserve our hospitality." So Quraysh gave money and food and water, and Qusayy provided for the pilgrims. He also served the rites themselves: he lit a fire at Muzdalifah so the pilgrims could carry light to their tents, and he dug a well for their water, since there was no Zamzam in his day. He was, frankly, both a good man and a good politician, for a good politician must please the people, and there is nothing wrong with being both.

❧Al-Hujun

Qusayy was buried at al-Ḥujūn, the famous cemetery of Mecca, the first person ever laid there, and it remains a renowned graveyard to this day. So the rise of Quraysh began with him: Qusayy raised them by politics and the reclaiming of Mecca; his great-grandson Hashim would raise them by wealth and trade; and Hashim's son ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib by prestige and the rediscovery of Zamzam. Each ancestor of the Prophet ﷺ changed the course of Quraysh, for the nobility of a lineage is nothing but what its forefathers built, one generation after another.