Al-Harithi

Overview

Al-Harithi (al-Ḥārithī) is the nisba of an ancestor called al-Ḥārith, and al-Ḥārith is one of the names the genealogists repeat most across the branches: it recurs in branch after branch of the classical ordering, in the north and in the south alike, so the nisba built on it arises again and again in lines that have nothing to do with one another. The corpus keeps several of them on separate pages — al-Ḥārith ibn Kaʿb of Madhḥij at Najrān, whose contracted name in the sources is Balḥārith; Banū al-Ḥārith ibn al-Khazraj among the Anṣār at Yathrib; Banū al-Ḥārith ibn Fihr of Quraysh; Banū al-Ḥārith ibn Fahm — and Ḥārith names recur within Azd and in ʿUmān besides. The root ḥ-r-th in Lisān al-ʿArab is tilling and the working of land, whence ḥarth and its extended sense of gain.

Names easily confused

This is a name that must be said plainly: the form al-Ḥārithī settles nothing by itself. It does not indicate a region, a scheme — northern or southern — or a tribe, because each of the groups above yields it identically, and beyond them any family whose remembered forebear was called al-Ḥārith produces it without belonging to any of them. Nor is the list closed: the name is far too common for the classical books to have registered every line that carried it. Yāqūt records more than one place called al-Ḥārithiyya, so a bearer may be pointing at a locality; and near forms in writing and speech, al-Ḥarthī among them, are met without marking a settled distinction. Only the fuller chain a family can document, not the nisba, places a line.

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.