And through this same chain it is related that whenever the Prophet—Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him—reached ʿAdnān in recounting his lineage, he would pause and say, “The genealogists have lied.” He would then recite, “and many generations in between” (Qur’an 25:38).

Abū al-Aswad, the ward of ʿUrwa, said: “I heard Abū Bakr ibn Sulaymān ibn Abī Ḥathmah—who was among Quraysh’s most knowledgeable about its genealogies and poetry—declare: ‘We have not found anyone, whether poet or scholar, who knows what lies beyond Maʿadd son of ʿAdnān.’”

Hishām ibn al-Kalbī said: “I heard someone claim that Maʿadd lived in the time of Jesus son of Mary, peace be upon him.”

Abū ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: “Certain early Muslims—among them ʿAbd Allah ibn Masʿūd, Muḥammad ibn Kaʿb al-Qurazī, and ʿAmr ibn Maymūn al-Awdī—whenever they recited, ‘and those after them—none knows them except Allah’ (Qur’an 14:9), would remark, ‘The genealogists have lied.’” Abū ʿUmar continued: “In our view, their intention was not what some imagine. Rather—and Allah knows best—the verse repudiates anyone who claims to enumerate all the descendants of Adam. As for the pedigrees of the Arabs, the scholars of their history and lineage have preserved the vast majority of them and the main tribal stocks, though they have differed over some of the subsidiary branches.”

The position adopted by the leading authorities in this field is that the line of descent runs: ʿAdnān ibn ʿAdad ibn Muqawwam ibn Nāḥūr ibn Tīraḥ ibn Yaʿrub ibn Yashjub ibn Nābit ibn Ismaʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Khalīl ibn Āzar—whose name was Ṭāriḥ—ibn Nāḥūr ibn Sārūgh ibn Rāʿū ibn Fāligh ibn ʿĀbir ibn Shāligh ibn Arfakhshadh ibn Sām ibn Nūḥ, peace be upon him, ibn Lāmak ibn Matushilakh ibn Khanūkh, who is Idrīs, peace be upon him, ibn Yarid ibn Mahlail ibn Qaynan ibn Yānish ibn Shīth ibn Adam, the father of mankind, peace be upon him. This is the genealogy adopted by Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq in his Sīrah, although his own students differed with him over some of the names.