Al-Sakuni

Overview

Al-Sakuni (al-Sakūnī) is the nisba of al-Sakūn, which Ibn Ḥazm and al-Qalqashandī enter as one of the two great divisions of Kinda beside al-Sakāsik, attributing it to al-Sakūn ibn Ashras as reported. The remembered diyār are in Ḥaḍramawt; after the conquests the sources record the group heavily in the garrison settlements, in the jund of Ḥimṣ and in Fusṭāṭ, and it is there rather than in Yemen that the nisba is thickest in the biographical literature. The root s-k-n in Lisān al-ʿArab is stillness and dwelling, whence sakan and sākin and maskan.

Names easily confused

The nisba names a tier and not a house. Tujīb is entered as a section of al-Sakūn, so al-Tujībī, al-Sakūnī and al-Kindī can all describe one line at different heights of the same ordering, and a family met under one of them in one source may appear under another elsewhere. Al-Sakāsik, the second division, yields al-Sakāsikī, which is a different nisba and not a variant of this one. In the garrison towns the form is met at least as often through walāʾ and through the quarter a group settled as through descent, and the biographical writers apply it to mawālī without marking them off. Vocalization does not settle much either: al-Sukūnī is recorded beside al-Sakūnī, and a nisba may equally be built on the ordinary sense of the root or on a forebear named Sakan or Sukayn.

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.