Al-Yarbui

Overview

Al-Yarbui (al-Yarbūʿī) is attributed to Banū Yarbūʿ, a section of Ḥanẓala of Banū Tamīm. Yāqūt attaches the name to a country as well as to a people — the upland he calls Ḥazn Banī Yarbūʿ. In Lisān al-ʿArab the yarbūʿ is the long-legged desert rodent, the jerboa, and the personal name is taken straight from the animal.

Names easily confused

Because Yarbūʿ is an ordinary name drawn from a familiar creature, it is not confined to one house: the genealogists record men called Yarbūʿ in more than one line, and a family from such a man bears al-Yarbūʿī with no share in the Tamīmī section. The nisba is also used at two depths — narrowly for Yarbūʿ itself, and loosely by later writers for anyone reckoned to Ḥanẓala or to Tamīm at large — so the same word in two books need not mark the same group. And Yāqūt's Ḥazn Banī Yarbūʿ opens a third reading: a name may attach through residence in a country called after a tribe rather than through descent from it, which is the distinction the note below turns on.

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.