Postby James Dahl » Sun Nov 02, 2008 6:29 am
The "official rules of Qabiil" may state that membership of a clan must mean direct patrilinear descent from the eponymous ancestor of that clan, but this rule has been bent so many different ways that it is meaningless.
The truth of the matter is that who is part of a clan is a matter of whatever is most convenient for that clan. If what's best for a clan is to forge alliances of convenience or long term strategic partnerships with peripherally or matrilinearily related clans, then that's what they'll do. If what's best for a clan is to "adopt" completely unrelated clans, that's also what they'll do.
What is always understood is that this arrangement is not the same thing as actually being patrilinearily descended from the eponymous ancestor, but you know what, it doesn't matter. Genealogy may be a matter of specifics and hard facts, but politics is a hazy and constantly-shifting matter, where what is convenient is often taken over what is strictly factual.
To understand clan, one must understand that qabiil is different from lineage. Qabiil is, in truth, the broad alliance of mutually interested parties who are often related but not strictly necessarily so, and one's lineage does not actually dictate one's qabiil. The fiction is that this is not true, that qabiil is strictly genealogical, but the clans where this is so are the exception rather than the rule. What is more often the case is that the epynomous lineage in a qabiil is merely the leading group of that qabiil, and lumped in are all that lineage's dependent clans, client clans, allied clans, matrilinear relations not in another qabiil, small lineages requiring protection, completely different ethnic groups also requiring protection, and "adopted" lineages. More often than not the lineage that gives its name to a qabiil is actually in the minority.
This is all rather confusing, which for people who do not understand the subtle distinction between one's actual lineage and qabiil politics, to cast doubt on the lineages rather than peering instead at the structure of the qabiil, which is more of a broad alliance than an extended family.
To summarize, Isaaq "became Irir" because it was convenient for Qabiil politics, and just as quickly discarded "being Irir" once it no longer held any political gain.
