Al-Bahri

Overview

Al-Bahri (al-Baḥrī) is the regular nisba to al-baḥr, the sea: the word is in the lexicon before it is on anyone's name, and Ibn Manẓūr enters it under b-ḥ-r among the ordinary derivatives of the root — baḥrī of what belongs to the sea, lies toward it, or comes from it. Nothing in the form points at a town, a country or a tribe. It says the sea, and no more.

The distinction Lisan records

The name earns a page here because a different page depends on it. Al-Baḥrayn is a dual, and the regular nisba to a dual would be Baḥraynī; yet the Arabs said Baḥrānī. Lisān al-ʿArab gives the reason for the irregularity, and the reason is this name: they wanted the nisba to the country of al-Baḥrayn held apart from the nisba to the sea, which is Baḥrī, and so they built the one on a shape the other could not reach. The irregular form is therefore not a slip and not a later corruption but a deliberate act of distinction, made in the classical language itself — and it can only be explained by naming the word it was distinguished from. That word had no entry in this reference until now.

An ordinary byname

Beyond the grammar, al-Baḥrī is borne as a plain descriptive byname, of a man of the sea: one who travelled it, worked on it, or lived on its shore, and of the trades that go with it. Bynames of this kind arise independently wherever there is a coast, and two men called al-Baḥrī in two countries need have nothing in common but the sea each lived beside. The sources also use baḥrī adjectivally in describing places and routes — what lies on the sea side of something — which is a use of the word and not a name at all, and a bare occurrence in a text has to be read for which it is.

Names easily confused

Three names on one root meet on this coast and are not the same. Al-Baḥrī is the sea. Al-Baḥrānī is the nisba to the country of al-Baḥrayn, irregular for the reason given above. Al-Baḥārī is a nisba to a village of the al-Qaṭīf oasis of that name. Each is written differently, but the difference is small and the root is shared, and none of the three can be inferred from either of the others. Further off but nearer in writing, al-Bahrānī with hāʾ is the nisba of Bahrāʾ of Quḍāʿah and is not on this root at all.

Bearing the name

A descriptive family name of this kind records what an ancestor was called — from the sea he lived by or worked on — not a lineage. It attaches to no tribe, and two families bearing it need have no connection to one another beyond the word itself.