Al-Khabaqah

Overview

Al-Khabāqa is given here as one of the localities of the al-Qaṭīf oasis, on the shore the geographers call al-Khaṭṭ. This is a short page, and it is short for a reason: almost nothing about the name can be established from the works this reference is allowed to use.

The name, and what is not settled about it

The written form is الخباقة. No source cited here vowels it, so even its reading is not fixed, and this page will not fix it by guessing.

As for the root, Ibn Manẓūr does enter kh-b-q. What he gives under it belongs to speed and gait: *khibiqq* and *khibaqq* of a swift horse, and *al-khibaqqā* of a manner of running. That is a genuine entry, and it is set down here so that a reader who goes looking for the root finds what is actually in the lexicon. But no source available to this page connects that root to this locality, and the sense does not obviously suit ground. The honest report is that the derivation is not settled: the name may stand on that root, or on a word the lexicons do not carry, and this reference does not decide between them.

What can be said without guessing is that the name belongs to the Qaṭīf oasis as the maintainer of this reference gives it, and that the nisba built on it is al-Khabāqī.

In the sources

The classical works this reference cites — Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr, Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī and Ibn Khaldūn — do not record this locality. Yāqūt describes the coast under al-Khaṭṭ and names al-Qaṭīf, and does not name this place; the lexicon carries a root of these letters but attaches it to nothing here. The page records the name and the country it stands in. It supplies no founder, no date and no history, because there are none to be had from these books.