This contribution explores how extended families that claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad and were based in the Ottoman-Arab provinces have navigated the transformation processes brought about by the end of the Ottoman Empire. The investigation draws on genealogical records kept today in the state archives in Istanbul and Amman and cross-reads these documents with memoirs, correspondences and other self-narratives of descendants of these families in the Ottoman and post-imperial period. This material helps to illustrate how information about kinship and genealogical origins was compiled, stored and activated while also inquiring about the connections which were assumed between genealogical claims and other collective resources, including property, economic and political opportunities, transregional networks and access to education in the late-Ottoman context. In a second step, the paper then introduces the notion of “genealogical capital” (Morgan 2010; Leykin 2021) to trace how historical actors made use of genealogical evidence in post-Ottoman contexts to (re-)claim these resources, to position themselves in newly-emerging social, political and economic competitions and to make statements about alternative historiographies. The investigation foregrounds the material dimension of these genealogical claims: It emerges that the genealogical records themselves, either in their original or as copies, transcripts, translations or even paraphrases, continued to have a consequential material presence in post-imperial times. Memoirs and oral history interviews illustrate how historical actors interacted with and later remembered these documents as they were being displayed, repeatedly interpreted and eventually passed on to younger generations. The genealogical records in question have a strong visual component which can transcend the epistemological ruptures and changes in language, scripture and archival cultures that have accompanied the end of the Ottoman Empire. Combining text and various graphic elements reaching from simple lines, circles and tables to intricate tree-shaped arrangements set in multiple colors and elaborate calligraphy into meaningful ensembles that remained legible even in post-Ottoman settings, these multilayered documents represent collective identities along with their diachronic dimension. As these records are also both portable and, at least in part, reproducible, they have the potential to outlast processes of migration, displacement and upheaval. Therefore, they come to stand in as references and substitutes for claims to other resources that proved either less mobile, like real estate or landed property, or are less swiftly translated into post-Ottoman epistemologies.