ʿAnak

Overview

ʿAnak stands on the al-Qaṭīf coast, on the al-Khaṭṭ seaboard, between the palm ground and the shore.

The name

The name is written عنك and vowelled ʿAnak. Ibn Manẓūr enters the root ʿ-n-k for sand: *al-ʿinak* is sand in quantity, and *ʿānik* is a great heaped dune, sand that has piled and knotted up — the lexicographers use the root of the shape of a sand hill rather than of anything built. That sense fits a name on a sandy shore, though the sources do not say that it is the one meant.

A short name is a fragile one in writing, and this is the practical point for anyone reading a register or a manuscript. Three consonants with no long vowel are quickly confused: عنك is a stroke away from عنق and from other short names, and an unpointed or careless hand loses the distinction entirely. Where a name is this brief, what identifies it is the country written beside it, not the letters alone.

In the sources

The classical works this reference cites — Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr, Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī and Ibn Khaldūn — do not name ʿAnak. 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.