Al-Qudsi

Overview

Al-Qudsi (al-Qudsī) is the nisba to the town the classical geographers know under several names. Yāqūt enters it as Bayt al-Maqdis, records Īliyāʾ as a name it carried, and gives al-Quds as the shorter form; he also sets out the readings of the fuller name, Bayt al-Maqdis and Bayt al-Muqaddas. The word itself is from q-d-s: in Lisān al-ʿArab al-quds is purity, and taqdīs is the making pure, so the name of the place is built on that sense.

Which nisba a reader meets

Because the place has more than one name it has more than one nisba, and they are not different origins. Al-Maqdisī, from Bayt al-Maqdis, is the older and by far the commoner form in the classical literature; al-Qudsī is the shorter attribution on the same place and is met later; and a rare Īliyāʾ form appears in early texts. A house may therefore be written one way in one document and another way in another. As with other towns, the books apply the nisba to men of the district and villages around the place as well as to men of the town itself.

Names easily confused

The common noun stays alive beside the name. Al-Quds is purity and blessing in the lexicon, and al-Qudsī can be read as an epithet formed on that sense with no place in it at all — the sources use the word freely in that way. Nothing in the written form separates the two readings.

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 place itself.