Al-Adwani

Overview

Al-Adwani (al-ʿAdwānī) is the nisba of ʿAdwān ibn ʿAmr, reckoned by the genealogists to Qays ʿAylān under Muḍar. The books report ʿAdwān as a byname rather than a birth name, given, as they tell it, for what fell out among the people of that line — a report the sources carry with the usual differences among them. The remembered range is al-Ṭāʾif and the country about it in the accounts of the age before Thaqīf held it. The root ʿ-d-w is in Lisān al-ʿArab running and passing beyond — ʿadw, the run; ʿudwān, transgression; and ʿudwa, the bank of a valley.

Names easily confused

The nearest confusion is al-ʿAdawī, the nisba to ʿAdī, which a sibling page covers: it is a different name on a different pattern, and though the two differ by a single letter they attribute to nothing in common; a register that files them together is not making a spelling choice but a genealogical claim. Al-ʿAdwānī is also formed on other ʿAdwāns recorded in the books, and, since ʿudwān is an ordinary word, on forebears named from it with no tribal sense. Al-ʿUdwānī and al-ʿAdwī are further written shapes that a careless hand produces and that attribute elsewhere or nowhere. The form is only a placement once a source names the ʿAdwān meant.

Bearing the name

A tribal nisba records what a family is called, not who its ancestors were. It may follow descent (ṣarīḥ), alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and only a family's own documented record tells those apart.