Al-Maghribi

Overview

Al-Maghribi (al-Maghribī) is the nisba to al-Maghrib. The word is a plain common noun from gh-r-b: in Lisān al-ʿArab al-maghrib is the place of the sun's setting, the standing opposite of al-mashriq, and it is the name of the prayer at that hour. As a proper name it is the whole western land of the Arabs, so called because it lies where the sun goes down from the older centres.

How wide the country is

The geographers begin al-Maghrib west of Egypt — some at Barqa, some beyond Ifrīqiya — and carry it to the Atlantic, and some accounts take al-Andalus in with it. Ibn Khaldūn, writing of that country from inside it, divides it in three: al-Maghrib al-adnā, al-awsaṭ and al-aqṣā, the near, the middle and the farthest. Only the last of the three answers roughly to the modern state that carries the name in Arabic. So a family attributed to al-Maghrib is attributed to a region running the width of North Africa, and the name does not say which part of it.

A name given from outside

Within that country a man is known by his town or his people; al-Maghribī is what he is called east of it. The nisba therefore belongs to families after a move, and is borne in Egypt, the Levant and the Ḥijāz. The common noun stays alive beside the name, so the word can also be read as an epithet with no place in it at all.

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.