Al-Arhabi

Overview

Al-Arhabi (al-Arḥabī) is the nisba of Arḥab, which the genealogists enter as a division of Bakīl of Hamdān, with diyār north-east of Sanaa. Al-Hamdānī, who knew the country at first hand, and Yāqūt after him treat Arḥab as a district as much as a people, and the lexicographers preserve the name in al-arḥabiyya, the riding camels the poets attributed to it. The nisba belongs to the northern Yemeni highlands and is met there far more than elsewhere.

Names easily confused

Because a country carries the name as well as a people, al-Arḥabī may be territorial: a family settled in the district could be known by it without a line into the division. The camels give the word a third use again, and a reference to al-arḥabiyya in an old poem is a reference to an animal, not to anyone's descent. Within Hamdān the nisba is one of several tiers — al-Bakīlī and al-Hamdānī name the same line more broadly, and a family may appear under any of the three. The root r-ḥ-b in Lisān al-ʿArab is spaciousness, whence raḥb and marḥaban, and it yields further nisbas — al-Raḥbī and al-Riḥābī among them — which Yāqūt attaches to places called al-Raḥba and which are not variants of this one.

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.