Al-Hashimi

Overview

Al-Hashimi (al-Hāshimī) is the nisba to Banū Hāshim, the clan of Quraysh named for Hāshim b. ʿAbd Manāf, whom Ibn Ḥazm and al-Qalqashandī place among the houses of Mecca. Hāshim is reported to have been a byname rather than a given name: in Lisān al-ʿArab hashm is the breaking of something dry, and the sources attach the byname to bread broken into broth. Hāshim is also borne as an ordinary personal name, so the same nisba can arise from any ancestor who carried it.

What the nisba does not settle

The name is borne very widely, and it is often read as a claim of descent through Hāshim. As a form it establishes nothing of the kind: like any tribal nisba it may follow descent, alliance or clientage, and the clients (mawālī) of a Qurashī clan appear in the classical books under its nisba exactly as its members do. Claims of sharifian or ʿAlid descent accordingly rest on a family's own documented record, which this reference does not adjudicate.

Names easily confused

Al-Hishāmī is a different nisba built on a different name — Hishām — from the same root, and modern writing merges the two. Beyond that, al-Hāshimī may be the nisba of a house to an ancestor named Hāshim who has nothing to do with Quraysh; the written form does not distinguish the two cases.

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.