Al-Muhayshi

Overview

Al-Muḥayshī is the nisba built on Ḥillat Muḥaysh, a locality of the al-Qaṭīf oasis on the coast the geographers call al-Khaṭṭ. Compound place-names of the shape *ḥillat X* usually give their nisba from the second element alone, the generic first word being dropped, and that is what has happened here: the name is not *al-Ḥillī* but *al-Muḥayshī*.

The first element of the place-name

The dropped word is worth a line, because it is the documented half. Ibn Manẓūr enters *ḥilla* under ḥ-l-l, from *ḥalla bi-l-makān*, to alight and stop: *al-ḥilla* is a company of people who have alighted, and the manner and place of their alighting. It is a generic, which is exactly why the nisba does not take it.

Muhaysh: not settled

For the second element the page offers no derivation, because none can be established. Two roots lie near it in the lexicon. Ḥ-w-sh gives *al-ḥawsh*, gathering a thing and driving it together; *ḥāsha al-ṣayd*, driving game in; and *al-ḥāʾish*, a close-standing stand of palms. M-ḥ-sh gives scorching, *maḥashat-hu al-nār*. Neither is joined to this name in any permitted source, and neither yields the written form by an ordinary derivation. The word has the look of a diminutive and may equally rest on a personal byname. This reference reports the derivation as unsettled rather than choosing one, which would be a guess dressed as a fact.

On sources

The classical works this reference is permitted to cite do not document the locality, and say nothing of a family name taken from it. The roots discussed above are in the lexicon; the connection is not. No founder, no date and no history is supplied for the name here.

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 word itself.