Al-Kufi

Overview

Al-Kufi (al-Kūfī) is the nisba to al-Kūfa in Iraq. The word is a common noun first: in Lisān al-ʿArab a kūfa is round red sand, and takawwafa of sand is for it to gather and lie in a ring. The lexicographers give a second sense from the same root — kawwafa al-qawm, for people to gather together — and Yāqūt relays both explanations of the town's name along with others, without preferring one.

The second garrison city

Al-Kūfa was settled as a miṣr in the same years as al-Baṣra, and the two towns stand together in the early literature: the schools of law, of Qurʾānic reading and of grammar are habitually named by them, and a reader of the biographical dictionaries meets al-Kūfī on page after page. The reason is the same as at al-Baṣra. Men came to the town to settle and to study and the nisba fixed on them there, so its frequency in those books is a fact about where learning was done and not about the descent of anyone bearing the name now.

Names easily confused

The angular script called Kufic takes its name from the town, so kūfī is met as a description of writing as well as of men; the two uses are unrelated on a family page. And because kūfa is a description of a kind of ground, the sources record other spots called by it, and a nisba to any of them is written exactly like a nisba to the city.

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.