Hilal

Meaning and root

From h-l-l (ه-ل-ل). The *hilāl* is the moon in its first nights: *Lisān al-ʿArab* has it called *hilāl* for two nights of the month — some say three — and *qamar* thereafter. Its sighting opens an Arabic month, so every date in an old family register is a day of a month a crescent began.

The root is a sound, not a light

The root's primary sense is a raised voice. *Ahalla* and *istahalla* are to raise the voice: hence the pilgrim's *ihlāl* in the talbiya, and *istahalla al-ṣabiyy*, the newborn who cries out at birth. The lexicographers derive the crescent's name from the shout raised at the sight of it, not from the light it gives.

As an eponym

Hilāl is an old Arab name. The genealogists name Hilāl ibn ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa of Hawāzin as the ancestor Banū Hilāl are named for, with the nisba *al-Hilālī* — as they report it. A shared name is not evidence of a shared line.