Al-Aslam

Overview

Al-Aslam — written الأسلم, with the definite article as it is usually reported — is named as one of the main sections into which Shammar is described as falling, its country placed in the mountain country of northern Najd and, in later reports, northward toward Iraq and the Jazīra. This page describes a historical section as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

An old name of the same shape

The classical genealogists enter an Aslam who is nothing to do with this section: Aslam b. Afṣā, of the stock from which Khuzāʿa is reckoned, a name of the earliest Islamic centuries in the Ḥijāz, and a name the compilers treat at length. That Aslam is in the books; the section of Shammar called al-Aslam is not, and the two are separated by both country and centuries. A shared shape of name across such a gap is a fact about names, not evidence of continuity, and this reference records the old name and the modern one side by side without joining them. Anyone who finds them joined elsewhere should ask what shows it besides the name.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root s-l-m for soundness and safety, for submission, and for the salam tree, one of the acacias of the desert; aslam is the elative of that root and is also an ordinary personal name. The lexicon explains the word; it does not say why any people came to be called by it, and the page does not supply what the lexicon withholds.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites do not document al-Aslam as a section of Shammar. Ibn Ḥazm is cited below for the old Ḥijāzī name only, and its citation note says so. The arrangement in which the modern section appears is later than all six permitted works, and what is reported about it comes from oral tradition and from modern writing outside those sources. Yāqūt may be cited for the country of northern Najd — the place, not the section. The page records a name in two bearings, and no descent.

On lineage

Branch lists and affiliations here are given as reported, and the genealogists differ among themselves. Nothing on this page establishes any living family's descent: a shared name may reflect descent, alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and the sources usually say which only when they know.