Places

Historic families and tribes of towns and regions.

• Abha

  The capital of the Asir region in the highlands of southwestern Saudi Arabia.

• Abu Dhabi

  The capital of the United Arab Emirates, an island city long associated with the Bani Yas confederation.

• Al-Aḥqāf

  The southern sands of Arabia as the classical geographers named them — curving dunes toward Ḥaḍramawt and Mahrah, not a bounded territory.

• Al-Ahsa

  One of the world's largest date-palm oases, in eastern Saudi Arabia; known in classical sources as Hajar and al-Ahsa.

• Al-Awjām

  A village of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The classical works cited here do not record it; the lexicon knows the word awjām for heaped stone marks.

• Al-Bāḥah

  A highland region of the southern Sarāt mountains — the recorded homeland of Ghāmid and Zahrān.

• Al-Baḥārī

  A village of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast, its name from the root b-ḥ-r — the sea — the same root that gives the country its name of al-Baḥrayn.

• Al-Baḥrayn (the historic region)

  In the classical sources, the whole eastern seaboard of Arabia from Basra to Oman — not the island state that later took the name.

• Al-Dirah

  A locality of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The name is read either with al-dayr, a monastery, or with al-dār and its plural al-diyār, a dwelling place; t

• Al-Dirʿiyyah

  A historic mud-brick town in Wādī Ḥanīfah beside Riyadh, and the seat of the first Saudi state.

• Al-Jārūdiyya

  A village of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The same written form is used in the older literature for a doctrinal designation, an entirely separate matter.

• Al-Jawf

  The northern oasis region around Dūmat al-Jandal — one of the oldest continuously settled places in Arabia.

• Al-Jishsh

  A village of the Qaṭīf oasis. Its name is an ordinary word — coarsely ground grain on one reading, rising ground on another — borne by places in more than one c

• Al-Khabaqah

  A locality of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The root kh-b-q is entered in the lexicon for swiftness in a horse and a manner of running, but no source cite

• Al-Khaṭṭ

  The classical name of this whole coast — the seaboard of al-Baḥrayn, and the place the Khaṭṭī spears of the poets are named from.

• Al-Khuwaylidiyya

  A village of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The name is a relative adjective built on the diminutive Khuwaylid; the classical works cited here do not recor

• Al-Kuwaykib

  A locality of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The name is the diminutive of kawkab, a star — the diminutive pattern being ordinary in Arabian place-names an

• Al-Mallāḥa

  A village of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The name is a plain Arabic word — a salt pan — though the classical works cited here do not record the village.

• Al-Mushaqqar

  An ancient fortress of Hajar in the country of al-Baḥrayn, entered by the geographers and named in pre-Islamic verse.

• Al-Nasirah

  A locality of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The name stands on the root n-ṣ-r, whose lexical field is help and support — and, said of rain, the watering o

• Al-Qalah

  A locality of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. In the lexicon a qalʿa is a stronghold; the root also gives qalaʿa, to uproot, and a qalaʿī lead and sword nam

• Al-Qaṣīm

  The agricultural heart of Najd — a belt of palm oases holding Buraydah and ʿUnayzah.

• Al-Qaṭīf

  An ancient Gulf oasis of dense palm groves on the eastern coast — one of Arabia's oldest farmed landscapes.

• Al-Qudayḥ

  A village of the Qaṭīf oasis. The name is the diminutive of qadaḥ, a drinking bowl. The classical works cited here do not record it.

• Al-Rabīʿiyya

  A village of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The name is a relative adjective from the root r-b-ʿ — of spring, and of the dwelling where people stay.

• Al-Shām (the Levant)

  The country from the Euphrates to the edge of Egypt — named for the left hand, as al-Yaman is named for the right, and covering in the sources far more than any

• Al-Shariah

  A locality of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. In the lexicon a sharīʿa is the watering place — the open way down to water that people go down to and drink f

• Al-Shuwayka

  A village of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. The name is the diminutive of shawka, a thorn — a common Arabian place-name, borne by more than one place.

• Al-Tubi

  A locality of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. Unusually, the place-name is written in the shape of a nisba, so the name of the place and the family name der

• Al-Zāra

  A large village of this coast that Yāqūt describes — palms, and a garrison posted there before Islam. More than one place carries the name.

• Al-ʿAwwāmiyya

  A village of the Qaṭīf oasis whose name is an ordinary Arabic word-form. The classical works cited here do not record it.

• Al-ʿAyn

  An inland oasis city on the Omani border, watered by falaj channels — the UAE's oldest continuously settled place.

• Al-ʿIrāq

  The low irrigated country of the Tigris and Euphrates — and, in al-Baṣra and al-Kūfa, the towns where much of Arab genealogy was collected and written down.

• Al-ʿUqayr

  A landing place on the Gulf shore below al-Aḥsāʾ. The name is a diminutive of a very common Arabic place-word, and the six classical works cited here do not ide

• Awāl

  The classical name of the island off this coast — and not a synonym for al-Baḥrayn, which in the sources is the whole mainland seaboard.

• Baynūna

  A district the geographers place along the eastern coast, between the country of al-Baḥrayn and ʿOmān. The name is an ordinary Arabic word before it is a place.

• Buraidah

  The capital of the Qassim region in central Saudi Arabia, historically a caravan and agricultural town of Najd.

• Dammam

  The capital of Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province on the Gulf coast, grown from a fishing and pearling settlement.

• Dārīn

  A harbour of this coast, and the most famous name in Arabic for musk — the musk of Dārīn, so called from the market and not from the source.

• Doha

  The capital of Qatar on the Gulf coast; its name derives from dawḥa, a wide rounded bay.

• Dubai

  A major Gulf city and emirate of the UAE, grown from a pearling and trading creek settlement.

• Hadhramaut

  A great valley region of southern Yemen, anciently attested; source of the widespread nisba al-Hadhrami.

• Hail

  A city of northern Najd between the mountains of Aja and Salma, long associated with the tribe of Shammar.

• Hajar

  The town Yāqūt records in eastern Arabia, and also the name the geographers give to the seat — and often to the whole — of the country of al-Baḥrayn. Proverbial

• Hillat Muhaysh

  A locality of the Qaṭīf oasis on the Khaṭṭ coast. Its first element is ḥilla, which the lexicon gives for a company of people alighting and their place of aligh

• Ifrīqiya

  The classical province around Qayrawān — not the continent, and the first stage of the westward migration accounts.

• Jāzān

  The southwestern coastal region on Tihama, facing the Farasan islands.

• Jeddah

  A historic port city on the Red Sea coast of the Hijaz, long a gateway for pilgrims and trade, with a diverse population of old families.

• Juwāthā

  A fortified place of the ʿAbd al-Qays country in al-Baḥrayn, named in the early sources, and remembered for the mosque of ʿAbd al-Qays that stood there.

• Khaybar

  A fortified oasis of palm groves north of Medina, on the road running toward the Levant.