Al-Khatib

The word

The root kh-ṭ-b turns on address. Lisān al-ʿArab separates two vocalizations that the written form hides: al-khuṭba, with ḍamma, is the speech delivered to an assembly, and al-khiṭba, with kasra, is the asking for a woman in marriage — both of them an approach made in words. The same root gives al-khaṭb, a matter or an affair of weight, which is what mā khaṭbuka asks after: what is your business. The khaṭīb is the speaker, and the lexicon uses it of the man who speaks for his people before it is a mosque office at all.

An office of the mosque

The word narrowed to the man who delivers the address at the congregational prayer, and Ibn Khaldūn treats that duty among the standing functions of settled government, appointed to and accounted for like the others. A man who held it was called al-khaṭīb, his sons were known by their father's calling, and the calling became the family's written name. From that point the word is an inherited name and no longer a description: it says that somebody, at some time, was so called, and it does not say who, or where, or when.

Bearing the name

A family name of this kind records a title, an office or a form of address that was applied to an ancestor and then stayed with his descendants. It is not a lineage in itself, and it confers nothing: no one bearing it today holds an office, a rank, a religious standing or a descent by virtue of the name. It attaches to no tribe, and two families bearing it need have no connection to one another beyond the word itself.