Hillat Muhaysh

Overview

Ḥillat Muḥaysh is given here as one of the localities of the al-Qaṭīf oasis, on the shore the geographers call al-Khaṭṭ. The name is a compound of two words, and the two are in very different positions: the first is well documented in the lexicon, the second is not.

The first element: ḥilla

Ibn Manẓūr enters *ḥilla* under ḥ-l-l, the root of *ḥalla bi-l-makān*, to alight in a place and stop there. *Al-ḥilla* is given for a company of people who have alighted — the *ḥulūl*, those encamped — and for the manner and the site of their alighting. From that sense the word passes easily into naming: a *ḥilla* is a quarter of settlement, and the word is a productive first element in compound place-names across the Arabic-speaking lands, followed by whatever specifies the particular one. That is exactly the shape of this name.

The second element: not settled

Muḥaysh is another matter, and the page will not manufacture an origin for it. Two roots stand nearby in the lexicon and neither is secure.

One is ḥ-w-sh. Ibn Manẓūr gives *al-ḥawsh* for gathering a thing and driving it together, *ḥāsha al-ṣayd* for driving game in from the sides, and *al-ḥāʾish* for a close-standing stand of palms — a sense that would sit naturally in an oasis, which is precisely why it should be treated with caution rather than seized on. The other is m-ḥ-sh, which the lexicon gives for scorching: *maḥashat-hu al-nār*, the fire scorched his skin.

Neither root is attached to this name by any source cited here, and the ordinary morphology does not lead cleanly from either to the written form. The word has the look of a diminutive, and it may equally rest on a personal byname. The honest report is that the derivation is not settled, and this page leaves it so.

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 of the Qaṭīf oasis. Yāqūt describes the coast under al-Khaṭṭ and names al-Qaṭīf; the lexicon gives *ḥilla* and the two roots named above. The page records the name and the country, not a history. The nisba built on the second element is al-Muḥayshī.