Genesis 10:26 describes him as a descendant of Shem in the genealogy Shem-Arphachshad-Shelach-Ever-Yaktan-Almodad; and specifically a son of Yoktan, which is a variant of Yaktan.
The list is clearly not genealogical at all, but the ancient equivalent of a map, a word-atlas so to speak, listing the names of those tribes who lived in the eastern hill country between Mesha and Sephar in southern Arabia (cf 1 Chronicles 1:20) and whose general ethnic root is Shem – i.e. they were Semites.
But stating this latter is also problematic. The [ludicrous and ridiculous] subdivision of humanity into racial sub-groups starts here, with Shem's brothers Cham and Yaphet providing the other sillinesses, Cham being anyone with black skin from Africa (north Africans who skin is "Moorish" may or not be included), Yaphet being white Europeans. The Semites, however, do not appear to go any further north than Turkey, leaving out Russia and the various "stans", nor any further east than Persia, leaving out everything from the Indus valley, by way of China, to the lands that we now call the Americas. Not a terrible useful way of reducing humans into sub-groups, even if such an exercise had any intrinsic use or value.
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