Al-Lujaymi

Overview

Al-Lujaymi (al-Lujaymī) is the nisba to Lujaym, which the genealogists enter as a section under Bakr ibn Wāʾil, on the Rabīʿa side of the ʿAdnānī lines. Ibn Ḥazm carries it there, and the lines the books reckon from it are among the better known of Bakr. This reference records Lujaym on its own page and does not repeat its account here. Bakr's country in the classical sources reaches across the eastern side of Arabia and toward the lower ʿIrāq, which is why nisbas of its sections are met on this coast.

The form

The name is a diminutive, lujaym on the pattern fuʿayl, and that shape is worth noticing because it is what keeps the name distinct. The word behind the pattern belongs to the root l-j-m, which Ibn Manẓūr enters for lijām, the bridle, and aljama, to bridle a beast; the diminutive of a word from that root gives exactly this shape. Whether the ancestor's name was given from that sense the sources do not say, and no derivation is asserted here — what is asserted is only the form.

Names easily confused

A diminutive is a small target in writing, and several near shapes stand around it. A byname built directly on lijām, the bridle, or on the trade of making bridles, is on the same root but is not this name and is written without the diminutive. Al-Luḥaymī, with ḥāʾ, is a diminutive on a different root altogether, that of laḥm, and differs by a single dotted letter. And the sources record other men and sections whose names fall on the fuʿayl pattern with letters close to these, which unvowelled writing does not distinguish. None of these can be read for another.

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. This page describes a historical section and its classical nisba, and makes no claim about any modern family.