Al-Balqarni

Overview

Al-Balqarni (al-Balqarnī) is the nisba of Balqarn, a tribe of the southern Sarāt in ʿAsīr, neighbouring Shahrān and Banī Shihr. The sources reckon Balqarn to the same Khathʿam grouping — reported by the genealogists, who differ among themselves, and resting on Khathʿam's own placement, which they never settled.

How the name is read

The name is commonly read as a contraction of Banū al-Qarn. The contraction is a real feature of south-western speech and is recorded in the classical dictionaries — Banū al-Ḥārith becomes Balḥārith by the same collapse of banū al- into bal-. The old works do not treat this particular tribal name, so the reading is how it is understood rather than something they state. Either way the nisba is built on the contracted form: al-Balqarnī, not al-Qarnī. A different nisba, al-Qaranī, belongs to Qaran, a place Yāqūt records in Yemen; it resembles this name only in writing.

Note

A shared nisba is not proof of shared descent. A name may be carried by descent, by alliance (ḥilf) or by clientage (walāʾ), and only a family's own documented line settles which.