Al-Khatti

Overview

Al-Khatti (al-Khaṭṭī) is the nisba to al-Khaṭṭ, which the geographers use for the shore of eastern Arabia — Yāqūt places it on the sea of al-Baḥrayn, in the country of ʿAbd al-Qays, and the town of al-Qaṭīf lies within the stretch the name covers. A nisba to it therefore points to a coast rather than to a single settlement, and older texts may attach it to a man whose town the same books name separately.

A market name, not an origin

This is the point worth keeping. The spears the poets call khaṭṭī are named from al-Khaṭṭ, and Lisān al-ʿArab reports plainly that the reeds did not grow there: the cane was brought in by sea and worked and straightened on that coast, and took the coast's name from the place it was handled and sold. Yāqūt carries the same explanation for the rimāḥ khaṭṭiyya. The adjective is thus a market name before it is a name of origin, and that has a consequence for the nisba: al-Khaṭṭī on a spear says where it was traded, and al-Khaṭṭī on a man says where he was reckoned to belong, and the two senses share nothing but the coast.

Names easily confused

Al-Khaṭṭī is not al-Khaṭīb, which is from kh-ṭ-b, the man who delivers the khuṭba, nor al-Khaṭṭābī, which is a nisba to the personal name Khaṭṭāb. The three are separate words with separate roots and should never be read for one another. Beyond that, khaṭṭ in Lisān al-ʿArab is also the ordinary word for a line and for writing, and for a tract of land marked out, so a byname built on any of those senses is written exactly as the nisba to the coast and cannot be distinguished from it on the page.

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.