الحسن بن علي بن أبي طالب
Qatadah's date of birth is not recorded, but based on differing reports of his age at death he was born circa either the early 1130s or the early 1150s. He was a sharif — a descendant of Muhammad's grandson Hasan ibn Ali, in the fifteenth degree. His full genealogy is: Qatadah ibn Idris ibn Muta'in ibn Abd al-Karim ibn Isa ibn Husayn ibn Sulayman ibn Ali ibn Abd Allah ibn ibn ibn ibn ibn ibn ibn al-Hasan ibn Ali. Ibn Khaldun writes that the Banu Hasan ibn Hasan (descendants of Hasan ibn Hasan ibn Ali) up to Qatadah's time were settled around Nahr al-Alqamiyah in Wadi Yanbu. He classifies them as people of the "badiyah" (pastoral desert or countryside), as distinguished from people of the "hadar" (urban center).