Al-ʿAwāliq

Overview

Al-ʿAwāliq — written العوالق, the singular nisba ʿAwlaqī — is reported in the southern uplands and along the desert fringe that runs east from them toward Ḥaḍramawt, between the mountain country and the sands. Reports variously attach the name to Ḥimyar and to other Yemeni stocks, and they do not agree. This page describes a historical group as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

The name

The root ʿ-l-q is clinging and attachment. Ibn Manẓūr gives ʿaliqa bihi for a thing that hangs on and does not let go, al-ʿalaq for what clings, and al-ʿilq for a prized possession a man holds fast to. The plural shape al-ʿAwāliq, with the singular in ʿAwlaqī, is the ordinary Arabic way of forming a group name from such a stem. The lexicon accounts for the word; it does not account for the naming of this group, and this page does not invent an account.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites — Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī, Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr and Ibn Khaldūn — do not document al-ʿAwāliq. Al-Hamdānī surveys this very country in the fourth century of the hijra and names the peoples he found in it, and this name is not among them; the group's present shape is later than his book and later than the rest. What is reported about it comes from later and oral tradition, and from modern writing outside the sources this reference is permitted to use. Al-Hamdānī is citable here for the country, not for the group. The page records the name and the region it is reported in; it records no descent.

What this page does not say

The later history of these uplands and of the country east of them ran through ruling houses whose names are still borne by living families. This reference does not enter that history: it attaches no house, no state and no living family to the name.

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.