Al-Uwali

Overview

Al-Uwali (al-Uwālī) is the nisba to Awāl, which Yāqūt names as an island in the sea of al-Baḥrayn. The nisba points at that island and at nothing wider.

The island and the region are not the same name

This is the distinction the page exists for. In the classical geography al-Baḥrayn is a large eastern region taking in a long stretch of mainland coast, while Awāl is one named island within its sea, and this reference keeps the two apart as separate places. A nisba to Awāl therefore says something narrower than a nisba to the region does, and the two should not be treated as interchangeable, nor either of them read back onto the other. Separately, the nisba al-Baḥrānī as the genealogists use it is not the nisba to al-Baḥrayn at all but the nisba of Bahrāʾ of Quḍāʿah — a different name on a different root — and readers meeting it near these pages should not take it for a name of this coast.

Names easily confused

The root ʾ-w-l gives awwal, first, and awāʾil, the first ones or the ancients, which is a very ordinary word; forms close to al-Uwālī can arise from it with no reference to the island.

Bearing the name

A toponymic family name records a place an ancestor was attributed to — born there, settled there, known by it — 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 place itself.