Al-Jawathi

Overview

Al-Jawathi (al-Juwāthī) is the nisba to Juwāthā, a place this reference records on its own page. The geographers enter Juwāthā as a ḥiṣn, a fortified place, in the country of al-Baḥrayn, and attach it to ʿAbd al-Qays; it stands in the ground behind the al-Khaṭṭ coast, toward the oasis country of al-Aḥsāʾ. The name is written both جُواثا and جُواثى, and a nisba built on either spelling comes out the same.

Unlike most of the village names of this coast, this one is genuinely in the old books, and that is worth saying: a nisba to a place the sources describe is on firmer ground than a nisba to a place they never mention. What the sources give of Juwāthā is set out on the place page and is not repeated here.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites — Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr, Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī and Ibn Khaldūn — record the place. They do not record al-Juwāthī as a family name, and this page does not supply a history for it. What can be said is the ordinary linguistic fact: the nisba to Juwāthā is formed regularly, and a man so called was attributed to that place. Beyond that the page records the name and the country, not a descent.

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. In particular, that Juwāthā is attached to ʿAbd al-Qays in the sources says something about the place, not about anyone who later carried its name.