Al-Muharibi

Overview

Al-Muharibi (al-Muḥāribī) is the nisba of Muḥārib, and the genealogists carry the one written form on several distinct forebears of the name. The one meant in the northern scheme is Muḥārib ibn Khaṣafa ibn Qays ʿAylān, reckoned under Muḍar, with a remembered range in Najd. The root ḥ-r-b is in Lisān al-ʿArab war and its taking — ḥaraba, to be stripped of one's goods, and the ḥarba, the spear — and muḥārib is the active participle of the third form, one who wages war, a name as readily given to a man as borne by a tribe.

Names easily confused

More than one Muḥārib is kept apart in the sources, and this is not a matter of spelling. Muḥārib ibn Fihr is a house of Quraysh — a separate Muḥārib, joined to the Qaysī one only far above in the ordering, so reading one for the other moves a family between two different branches of the northern scheme. Further Muḥārib groups are recorded again elsewhere, each yielding the same nisba from a line of its own. And because muḥārib is an ordinary participle, a nisba may be built on any near forebear who carried it with no tribal sense whatever. The form should therefore never be treated as a placement on its own; only a source naming which Muḥārib is meant places it.

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.