The origins of the Bani al-Atrash family are obscure, according to Druze historian Kais Firro, who asserts that like other prominent Middle Eastern families, genealogical trees were only reconstructed after the consolidation of a family's power. The Bani al-Atrash claim descent from Ali al-Aks, a ruler of the Jabal al-A'la mountain in the western countryside of Aleppo. This claim is affirmed by several historians of the family, but is viewed skeptically by Firro. Some members of the family claim descent from the Ma'an clan, the Druze power in Mount Lebanon during Mamluk and early Ottoman rule (14th-17th centuries).