Al-Wadii (of Wadia)

Overview

Al-Wadii (al-Wadīʿī) is the nisba to Wadīʿa. In the ordering the genealogists use for ʿAbd al-Qays, ʿAmr ibn Wadīʿa is the stem under which several of the tribe's sections on the al-Qaṭīf coast are entered — a node in the arrangement rather than a group met on its own in the reports. A nisba built on it therefore points at a place in a genealogical table, and older texts using it may mean the stem or one of the sections beneath it without saying which.

Names easily confused

Al-Wadīʿī and al-Wādiʿī are two names. The second is the nisba of Wādiʿah of Hamdān in Yemen, which this reference keeps on its own page; it differs by the alif and by the vowelling, and it belongs to a different tribal line and a different country altogether. Written quickly, or set without vowels, the two are hard to keep apart, and neither may be inferred from the other. A family holding the name should establish from its own record which of the two it carries.

The word

The root w-d-ʿ in Lisān al-ʿArab gives leaving and letting be, and also the wadīʿa, a thing entrusted to someone for keeping. Names of this shape arise from those senses independently of any 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. This page describes a name and a historical stem in the genealogies, and makes no claim about any family bearing it.