Al-Ataki

Overview

Al-Ataki (al-ʿAtakī) is the nisba of al-ʿAtīk, a section the genealogists enter under Azd. Its association is with ʿUmān, where Azd settled in strength, and with Baṣra and Khurāsān afterwards: the biographical literature of the early Islamic east is full of the form, and it is there rather than in the Arabian south that most bearers are met. The root ʿ-t-q in Lisān al-ʿArab carries age and precedence — ʿatīq for what is old and choice — and, in its most consequential sense here, ʿitq, the freeing of a slave.

Names easily confused

That last sense is the reason the form must be read carefully. Baṣra was a town where walāʾ was ordinary, and the biographical writers apply al-ʿAtakī to a group's mawālī as freely as to its ṣarīḥ members, without a mark separating them; on its own the nisba does not say which is meant. The root also supplies near neighbours that the written form brings close without joining: al-ʿAtīqī and al-ʿUtaqī rest on ʿatīq and ʿitq directly, and al-ʿĀtikī is built on ʿĀtika, a woman's name borne in more than one house, so it is a different nisba altogether. The vocalizations al-ʿAtakī and al-ʿAtīkī are both met for this name and do not by themselves mark different lines.

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.