Al-Saqqa

Overview

Al-Saqqa (al-Saqqāʾ) comes from s-q-y. In Lisān al-ʿArab saqā and asqā are to give to drink, the siqāʾ is the waterskin, the misqāt is the vessel, and the saqqāʾ is the man who carries water and sells it. Before piped supply a town's households were served by water-carriers working from wells, cisterns and the river with skins on their backs or on a beast, and the trade left its name on families throughout the Levant, Egypt and Iraq.

The two spellings, and what the name is not

The form ends in a long alif and is written both السقا, plainly, and السقّاء, with the hamza on the extended alif that the classical orthography gives it. They are the same name, and a family may write it either way in different documents; neither spelling marks a different origin or a different family. It should also not be read as al-Saqqāf, from s-q-f, roofing, which adds a letter and is a separate word. And the name records the trade of carrying water and nothing else: it does not connect a bearer to the office of watering the pilgrims (siqāya) at Mecca, which the sources treat as a charge held by particular Qurashī houses in their own time, not a family name descending to anyone today.

Bearing the name

An occupational or toponymic family name records what an ancestor did or where he was from, 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.