Al-Naqqash

The word

Al-Naqqash (al-naqqāsh) is built on n-q-sh. In Lisān al-ʿArab naqsh is the marking of a thing and the working of it fine: naqasha al-khātam, he cut the device into the seal-stone; naqasha a wall or a garment, he ornamented it; and the minqāsh is the small tool the work is done with. The root has a second life in the same lexicon — naqasha a thorn is to draw it out with the minqāsh, and nāqashahu al-ḥisāb is to go over an account item by item, whence munāqasha, argument in the strict sense of scrutiny.

Wider than the modern word

Modern Arabic has narrowed naqqāsh toward the painter and the decorator. The classical sources use it for three kinds of hand at once: cutting a device into seal-stone and metal, incising and inscribing on stone and plaster, and laying coloured ornament on wall and wood. A family name formed from it may record any of the three, and the sources give no way to tell which from the word. The related ḥaffār and ḥakkāk name the cutting alone.

Bearing the name

An occupational family name records what an ancestor did, 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.