Al-Qudayḥ

Overview

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

The name

The name is written القديح and vowelled al-Qudayḥ, the diminutive of *qadaḥ*. Ibn Manẓūr enters the root q-d-ḥ with the vessel first: *al-qadaḥ* is the bowl a man drinks from, and its plural is *aqdāḥ*. The same root gives *qadaḥa bi-l-zand*, to strike fire from a fire-stick, whence *qaddāḥ* for the flint, and *al-qādiḥa* for the rot that gets into a tooth or into a tree. Diminutives of ordinary objects are common in Arabic place names, and the form here is a straightforward one.

The lexicon accounts for the word; it does not say why this ground took it, and the sources cited here offer nothing further.

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-Qudayḥ. 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.