Al-Judhami
A family name (nisba) to Judhām of the Kahlān line in the north of the Ḥijāz — a name that shares a root with an unrelated word and a brother-tribe with a nearly interchangeable nisba.
- Type
- Tribal nisba
- Attributed to
- Judhām, of the Kahlān line (as reported)
- Root
- j-dh-m — the stock of a thing, and the cutting of it
- Not to be read as
- Any reference to the disease judham, which is a separate word on the same root
Overview
Al-Judhami (al-Judhāmī) is the nisba of Judhām, which the genealogists reckon to the Kahlān line and enter beside Lakhm as a brother. Its recorded country is the north of the Ḥijāz — Ḥismā near Ayla, Madyan, and the road running from there toward the Levant and Egypt. The root j-dh-m is in Lisān al-ʿArab both the stock or origin of a thing, al-jidhm, and the cutting of it; the books report the name and do not settle which sense was intended.
Names easily confused
Two things need separating. The first is a word, not a name: judhām is also the ordinary Arabic term for the disease, built on the cutting sense of the same root. The tribal name is not derived from it and carries none of its sense, and a family called al-Judhāmī is named from the tribe in the genealogies, not from an ailment. The shared root is a root, not a meaning, and the classical books use the two without any confusion between them.
The second is the brother. Judhām and Lakhm are entered together, held in the same country and named in the same notices, and later writing interchanges al-Judhāmī and al-Lakhmī as though they were forms of one name. They are two tribes and two nisbas.
Beyond that, the form is territorial nowhere: no place of note carries the name, so what the nisba does not settle is only which of the tribe's recorded branches, if any, a line belongs to.
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.
Sources
- ابن حزم الأندلسي، جمهرة أنساب العرب، 456هـ — نسب جذام في كهلان وقرنها بلخم؛ يُراجَع ويُوثَّق قبل إثبات التفاصيل
- ابن منظور، لسان العرب، 711هـ — مادة: جذم
- القلقشندي، نهاية الأرب في معرفة أنساب العرب، 821هـ — في جذام ومنازلها في شمالي الحجاز
This page is an educational, historical reference compiled from published sources. It is not an authority on lineage. Where sources differ, we report the difference without taking a position. Corrections are welcome via our contact page.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-07