Al-Khawlani

Overview

Al-Khawlani (al-Khawlānī) is the nisba of Khawlān, and the first thing to say about it is that Khawlān is not one people. The sources themselves keep two apart: Khawlān of Ṣaʿda in the far north of Yemen, and Khawlān al-ʿĀliya east of Sanaa, and al-Hamdānī, who describes both countries, does not merge them. Nor did the genealogists agree on where Khawlān belongs — some enter it under Quḍāʿa, others under Kahlān within the southern scheme, and Ibn Ḥazm and al-Qalqashandī report the disagreement rather than resolving it. After the conquests the nisba is dense in the jund of Ḥimṣ and in Egypt.

Names easily confused

So the form leaves two questions open at once: which Khawlān, and under which filing. A bearer described as al-Khawlānī in an early source may be of the northern country or of the eastern one, and the text will often not say. Yāqūt enters Khawlān as a mikhlāf, so the nisba may point at the land rather than at a people at all. In Ḥimṣ and Fusṭāṭ it is met through the jund and through walāʾ as much as through descent. The root kh-w-l in Lisān al-ʿArab carries khawal, dependants and servants, and khāl, the maternal uncle; from it come al-Khawlī and al-Khūlī, which are separate nisbas that the written form brings close to this one without joining them.

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.