Al-Haik

Overview

Al-Haik (al-Ḥāʾik) comes from ḥ-w-k. In Lisān al-ʿArab ḥāka al-thawb yaḥūkuhu ḥawkan wa-ḥiyākatan is to weave it, the ḥāʾik is the weaver and the plural is ḥāka and ḥawaka, and the ḥiyāka is his craft. The same root is used of putting words together — ḥāka al-kalām, of a speaker who composes his speech tightly — and of a way of walking. Unlike most trade names this one is an active participle (fāʿil) rather than the intensive faʿʿāl.

Ḥāʾik and nassāj

The two words both mean a weaver and the sources do not use them alike. Ḥ-w-k is the narrower and more concrete: the man at the loom, working warp and weft with his hands, and the word carries him rather than the process. N-s-j is the general word for interlacing anything — the wind over sand, the spider, a composed speech — and al-Nassāj is the trade name drawn from it. A family called al-Ḥāʾik and a family called al-Nassāj are named for the same craft by two different words.

What the books record about the trade

The classical adab and the collections of anecdote record a low estimate of the weaver's trade, and the ḥāʾik is a fixed type in their jokes. That is a recorded attitude of a particular literature, not a fact about any person or family: Ibn Khaldūn's account of the crafts treats the standing given to a craft as something a society assigns and changes. The word is named here because a reader meets it in the sources, and the family name carries none of it.

Bearing the name

An occupational or toponymic family name records what an ancestor did or where he was from, as the name was applied to him — not a lineage. It attaches to no tribe, and two families bearing it need have no connection to one another beyond the word itself.