Al-Umawi

Overview

Al-Umawi (al-Umawī) is the nisba to Banū Umayya b. ʿAbd Shams b. ʿAbd Manāf, whom Ibn Ḥazm and al-Qalqashandī count among the clans of Quraysh at Mecca. Umayya is a personal name, and Lisān al-ʿArab gives it as the diminutive of amah, a bondwoman — a diminutive pattern Arabic uses freely in naming, with no sense of standing attached to it.

Names easily confused

The genealogists record a second Banū Umayya that has nothing to do with Quraysh: Umayya b. Zayd of the Aws at Medina, whose descendants are Anṣār and whose nisba is written exactly the same way. Within the Qurashī clan itself the sources further separate Umayya al-Kubrā from al-ʿAbalāt, the sons named after their mother ʿAbla, and both fall under al-Umawī. The form therefore names a clan, and not a branch inside it.

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.