Al-Amili

Overview

Al-Amili (al-ʿĀmilī) is the nisba of ʿĀmila, a tribe the genealogists hold close to Lakhm and Judhām in the Kahlān line and record in the southern Levant; the sources differ over the name itself, reporting it both as a man in the line and as the mother whose name the descendants carried. The root ʿ-m-l is in Lisān al-ʿArab that of work, and ʿāmil is one who works and, in the administrative language, an agent or a collector.

Names easily confused

This name divides three ways, and saying which is meant is the whole of the work.

First, the tribe, as the genealogists enter it. Second, the district: the mountain country of the southern Levant carries the tribe's name as Jabal ʿĀmil, and when Muʿjam al-Buldān is cited for al-ʿĀmilī it is normally the place that is being cited, not the tribe. A family named from the district is named from where it lived, and in the written form that is indistinguishable from the tribal nisba. Third, the root: because ʿāmil is an ordinary word and an ordinary title of office, the nisba can be built on a forebear so described, with no tribal or territorial sense at all.

Where the nisba is met alongside claims of sayyid or ʿAlid descent, the form establishes nothing of the kind; such a claim rests on a family's own documented record, and the name is not evidence for it either way.

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.