Al-Numayri

Overview

Al-Numayri (al-Numayrī) is the nisba of Numayr ibn ʿĀmir ibn Ṣaʿṣaʿa, reckoned by the genealogists to Hawāzin under Muḍar, with its remembered range in Najd and, in the later sources, along the Euphrates and in the northern Jazīra. The best-known bearer in the early literature is the Umayyad poet al-Rāʿī al-Numayrī. Numayr is in Lisān al-ʿArab the diminutive of namir, the leopard, from the root n-m-r.

Names easily confused

Al-Namirī, also written al-Namarī, is a different nisba of the same root: it belongs to al-Namir ibn Qāsiṭ, whom the genealogists reckon to Rabīʿa, not to Qays ʿAylān at all. Undotted and unvowelled the two are near-identical on the page, and the diminutive is what separates them — Numayr the branch of ʿĀmir against al-Namir the tribe of Rabīʿa. Numayr is besides an ordinary diminutive personal name, so the form can also arise outside either tribe wherever a forebear bore 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.