Al-Tujibi

Overview

Al-Tujibi (al-Tujībī) is the nisba of Tujīb, which the genealogists enter as a section of al-Sakūn of Kinda and name, unusually, from a woman rather than a father — Tujīb is reported as the mother of the two brothers whose progeny carry it. The early diyār are those of Kinda in Ḥaḍramawt, but the form belongs above all to the conquest settlements: a quarter of Fusṭāṭ carried the name, and from Egypt the nisba passed westward into the biographical writing of the Maghrib and al-Andalus, where it is met steadily.

Names easily confused

Because Tujīb sits low in the ordering, al-Tujībī, al-Sakūnī and al-Kindī may all name one line at different heights, and the sources move between them. In Egypt and the west the form is met through the quarter and through walāʾ as much as through descent — a family settled in the Tujīb khiṭṭa could be called by it without any claim of blood, and the biographical writers do not mark the two uses apart. The written form is also close to nisbas on other roots that pointing alone separates, and the name is met vowelled more than one way; neither variation marks a different line by itself. Yāqūt records places carrying the name, so a bearer may be pointing at a locality rather than at the tribe.

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.