Al-Khabbaz

The word

Al-Khabbaz (al-khabbāz) is built on kh-b-z. In Lisān al-ʿArab khabaza the dough is to make bread of it, the khubza the loaf, and the man who does it is the khābiz, the khabbāz being the one who takes it as a trade and sells its produce. The lexicon keeps the older manner of baking in view — the loaf buried in hot ash is the malīl — and the same root gives the mallow its name, al-khubbāzā, for the shape of its seed. Ibn Khaldūn counts bread-making among the crafts a settled population needs before any other food trade.

The bread and the oven

Al-Khabbāz and al-Farrān are constantly taken for two trades. In the lexicon they are one trade named from two things: khabbāz from the bread itself, farrān from the furn it is baked in. Which of the two a family carries generally reflects which word its region used — the Levant and Iraq favouring one, Egypt and the Maghrib the other — rather than any difference in what the ancestor did. Neither name says whether he owned the oven or worked at it.

Bearing the name

An occupational family name records what an ancestor did, 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 word itself.