Al-Jadhimi

Overview

Al-Jadhimi (al-Jadhīmī) is the nisba to Jadhīma. Where the eastern coast is meant, the Jadhīma intended is the section the genealogists enter within ʿAbd al-Qays, the tribe Ibn Ḥazm traces under Rabīʿa and whose remembered country is this seaboard — the shore called al-Khaṭṭ, with al-Qaṭīf and the region of al-Baḥrayn within it. Read that way, the nisba is one of the narrower ʿAbd al-Qays names and says more than al-ʿAbdī does.

Why the name does not place a man

Jadhīma is not one name in the books. The genealogists carry groups and men so called in more than one line — in Kināna, and in the accounts of al-Ḥīra — with no connection to this coast or to one another, and the nisba built on each of them is written identically. The word itself is ordinary: the root j-dh-m in Lisān al-ʿArab gives cutting off and severing, and names of this shape arise from it independently wherever a forebear was so called. So al-Jadhīmī is consistent with the ʿAbd al-Qays section and equally consistent with several other origins, and only a source that says which Jadhīma is meant can decide between them.

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. This page describes a name and the historical groups the classical books attach it to, and makes no claim about any family bearing it.