Al-Hufufi

Overview

Al-Hufufi (al-Hufūfī) is the nisba to al-Hufūf, the town of the al-Aḥsāʾ oasis in eastern Arabia. The word is from h-f-f: in Lisān al-ʿArab hafīf is a light dry sound, and it is used above all of the sound of the wind passing; the name is reported from that.

A town inside a country

Al-Aḥsāʾ in the geographers is a country — the oasis land within what the classical books call al-Baḥrayn, the eastern littoral — and al-Hufūf is its town. The two nisbas therefore stand one inside the other: al-Aḥsāʾī places a family in the country, al-Hufūfī in the town within it, and a single family of a single origin can be written either way, in different documents or in different generations. Neither is more exact about descent than the other, and finding both in a family's papers is not evidence of two origins.

The older name

Al-Hufūf as a town name is later than the country. The older attribution for a man of this land in the classical books is to Hajar, which Yāqūt gives as the name of the country of al-Baḥrayn and of its principal settlement, so the early nisba a reader will meet is al-Hajarī rather than al-Hufūfī.

Bearing the name

A toponymic family name records a place an ancestor was attributed to — born there, settled there, known by it — 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 place itself.