Al-Jārūdiyya

Overview

Al-Jārūdiyya is one of the settlements of the al-Qaṭīf oasis, on the coast the geographers call al-Khaṭṭ — the spring-watered palm country behind the shore of al-Baḥrayn. The village is the subject of this page.

The name

The name is written الجارودية and vowelled al-Jārūdiyya: a feminine relative adjective on al-Jārūd, a byname of the shape of an active participle from the root j-r-d, the root of *jarada*, to strip a thing bare. The lexicon uses that root of a barren year that strips the ground, and of ground left bare. Bynames of this shape were ordinary in the classical period. Whether the village was named from such a byname, or from the word directly, the sources cited here do not say.

Two uses of one word

The same written form, *al-Jārūdiyya*, is used in the older literature as the designation of a doctrinal group, and it is necessary to say plainly that the two are not to be confused. This page is about the village of the Qaṭīf oasis. It records nothing about that designation beyond the fact that the word is also used for it; it takes no position on it; and it connects the village, and the people of it, to nobody. A shared string of letters is not a shared subject.

In the sources

The classical works this reference cites — Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr, Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī and Ibn Khaldūn — do not name this village. Yāqūt describes the coast under al-Khaṭṭ and names al-Qaṭīf; the lexicon gives the root. The page records the name, the country it stands in, and the caution above — and no history. The nisba built on the village is al-Jārūdī.