Al-Muradi

Overview

Al-Muradi (al-Murādī) is the nisba of Murād, a large tribe the genealogists enter under Madhḥij with diyār in Yemen. They report the name itself as a laqab laid on a man whose given name they give otherwise, and derive it from the sense of rebellion or of departure — the reports differ, and the corpus follows them in reporting rather than settling. After the conquests the tribe is recorded in al-Kūfa and in Egypt, and the nisba is common in the biographical literature of both.

Names easily confused

The commonest confusion is not with another tribe but with an ordinary word. Murād in Arabic is the thing desired, from the root r-w-d — the same root as irāda and murīd in Lisān al-ʿArab — and Murād is besides a widely borne given name outside the Arabic-speaking lands, so al-Murādī may be built on either with no Madhḥijī sense whatever. Vocalization separates names that writing joins: al-Murādī and al-Marādī are not one nisba, and the form sits close to others distinguished only by pointing or by a single vowel, which a plain unvowelled register does not show. Where the sources place a bearer in Kūfa or Fusṭāṭ, the town and walāʾ account for the form as readily as descent.

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.