Al-Taymi
A family name (nisba) to an ancestor named Taym — Taym b. Murra of Quraysh, Taym of al-Ribāb with Tamīm, and the compound Taym names of Rabīʿa are all written the same.
- Type
- Tribal nisba
- Attributed to
- An ancestor named Taym — in Quraysh, al-Ribāb and Rabīʿa
- Root
- t-y-m
Overview
Al-Taymi (al-Taymī) is the nisba to an ancestor named Taym. The root is t-y-m: in Lisān al-ʿArab a taym is a slave, tayyamahu al-ḥubb is love that has made a servant of a man, and the compound Taym Allāh was understood as ʿAbd Allāh — which is why Taym enters so many separate genealogies as a name.
Names easily confused
The genealogists keep at least three lines of Taym apart. Taym b. Murra b. Kaʿb b. Luʾayy is a clan of Quraysh at Mecca. Taym b. ʿAbd Manāt b. Udd is one of the groups gathered into al-Ribāb, and its name is hardly written without its confederation, since it appears in the reports allied with Tamīm. And in Rabīʿa the sources record the compounds Taym Allāh and Taym al-Lāt, whose bearers are also called al-Taymī, though a nisba al-Tayamullī is reported for the second. Reduced to al-Taymī, none of these can be told from the others.
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.
Sources
- ابن منظور، لسان العرب، 711هـ — مادة: تيم
- ابن حزم، جمهرة أنساب العرب، 456هـ — في قريش، والرباب، وربيعة
This page is an educational, historical reference compiled from published sources. It is not an authority on lineage. Where sources differ, we report the difference without taking a position. Corrections are welcome via our contact page.
Last reviewed: 2026-09-07