Al-Mujashii

Overview

Al-Mujashii (al-Mujāshiʿī) is attributed to Banū Mujāshiʿ, whom Ibn Ḥazm places under Dārim of Banū Tamīm and whose name recurs constantly in the Baṣran poetry of the Umayyad age. Mujāshiʿ is an active participle from the root j-sh-ʿ; jashaʿ in Lisān al-ʿArab is the sharpest form of appetite, greed — one of the many Arabic personal names taken from a quality rather than in praise of it.

Names easily confused

This is a section name, several tiers below the tribe, and its trouble is that later writing attaches it loosely. In the classical books al-Mujāshiʿī locates a man inside Dārim, inside Tamīm, precisely; in later use it is often set down as though it meant no more than al-Dārimī, or even al-Tamīmī, and then read back as their equivalent. The three are not equivalent: every Mujāshiʿī is reckoned a Dārimī and a Tamīmī, and no Tamīmī is a Mujāshiʿī on that account. Mujāshiʿ is besides an ordinary personal name, so the form can arise from an ancestor who simply bore it, with nothing behind 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.