Al-Faqih

The word

Lisān al-ʿArab gives f-q-h its general sense before its technical one: al-fiqh is understanding, faqiha al-shayʾ is he grasped it, and the lexicon notes that the word was then made the proper name of the science of the sacred law, so that faqīh came to mean the man learned in it specifically. The older, wider sense never disappeared from the language: a faqīh in a line of poetry may simply be a man who understands what he is looking at.

A name in two registers

The word became a byname for the man of law, and it hardened into family names wherever that description was worth writing down. Alongside it, in Yemen, in the Maghrib and across parts of the Gulf and the Nile valley, faqīh — often shortened in speech — is what people call the man who teaches children their letters and their Qurʾān in a village school, which is a different thing from the jurist and much more common. A family name written al-Faqīh may come from either, and the written form does not say which; only a household's own record can.

Bearing the name

A family name of this kind records a title, an office or a form of address that was applied to an ancestor and then stayed with his descendants. It is not a lineage in itself, and it confers nothing: no one bearing it today holds an office, a rank, a religious standing or a descent by virtue of the name. It attaches to no tribe, and two families bearing it need have no connection to one another beyond the word itself.