Central to the ʿAlids' claims to social distinction and entitlement to a variety of privileges was their close genealogical connection to the Prophet. With the dispersal of the family to all parts of the Islamic world, which accelerated after the failed revolt of Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī at Fakhkh in 169/789, the establishment of certain controls over this connection became increasingly important. This concern is reflected in the appearance of Ṭālibid genealogies, genealogical works focusing explicitly on the Ṭālibid branch of the Banū Hāshim, from the mid-third/ninth century onwards. The Umdat al-ṭālib of Ibn ʿInaba (d. 828/1424–5), which dates from the early ninth/fifteenth century, is the most famous and widely used of such works, yet it stands at the end of the development of a specific genre or group of works: genealogies of the family of the Prophet, based on family (or local) registers, which were written by genealogists who were themselves predominantly ʿAlids or Ṭālibids.

Genealogy, of course, was by no means a new genre. Arab genealogy was a central form of early Islamic historiography, recording the heritage of the Arab pre-Islamic past in Islamic terms. The major difference between the Ṭālibid works and the earlier Arab genealogies, such as Ibn al-Kalbī's (d. 204/819) Jamharat al-nasab, is the former's concern with contemporary lineages. Whereas the general Arab genealogies may be termed a ‘backward-looking genre’, the Ṭālibid works are by contrast ‘forward-looking’ and concerned with their current times: Which lineages have survived?