Al-Jishsh

Overview

Al-Jishsh is one of the settlements of the al-Qaṭīf oasis on the al-Khaṭṭ coast, in the palm ground behind the shore.

The name

The name is written الجش, and is met vowelled al-Jishsh and al-Jushsh. Ibn Manẓūr enters the root j-sh-sh in two useful senses. The first is milling: *jashsha al-ḥabb* is to bruise or grind grain coarsely, whence *jashīsh* and *jashīsha*, the coarse-ground grain and the dish made from it. The second is ground: *al-jushsh* is what rises from the earth, a low rise or hillock.

Both senses are common, and the word names places in more than one country — the written form الجش is not distinctive. So the name in a text does not on its own say which place is meant, and a family name built on it says nothing further. Where an ordinary word does duty as a proper name, the country given beside it is what identifies it.

In the sources

The classical works this reference cites — Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr, Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī and Ibn Khaldūn — do not name Al-Jishsh. They describe this coast, and they describe it well: Yāqūt enters it as al-Khaṭṭ, the seaboard of al-Baḥrayn, and names al-Qaṭīf and the harbours along it. Ibn Manẓūr explains the word; the place-book does not enter this village. The page therefore records the name, how it is written and vowelled, and the country it stands in. It does not record a history, and nothing here should be read as one.