Al-Laythi

Overview

Al-Laythi (al-Laythī) is the nisba of Layth ibn Bakr ibn ʿAbd Manāt, reckoned by the genealogists to Kināna, brother in the ordering to Ḍamra, with a remembered range in the Hijaz between Mecca and Medina and the Tihāma below. The root l-y-th is in Lisān al-ʿArab the layth, the lion, with the strength and grip the word carries — a name long given to a son as a plain personal name, which is the first reason this nisba is crowded.

Names easily confused

Because Layth is an ordinary personal name and always was, a great many bearers of al-Laythī are attributed to a near forebear so called and to no tribe whatever; the form does not distinguish the two uses, and no reading of it should assume the tribal sense. Layth groups outside Kināna are recorded in the books as well and yield the same nisba from lines of their own. A third route is geographical: the geographers know a place of this name on the Tihāma coast south of Mecca, and a nisba to a place is not a nisba to a tribe, though the written forms are indistinguishable. Sisters of the same parent — al-Ḍamrī and, beneath it, al-Ghifārī — sit at the neighbouring tier and may be met for one line in different books.

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.