Al-Duʿūm

Overview

Al-Duʿūm — written الدعوم — is reported as one of the sections named under Banū Khālid, with its country placed in eastern Arabia, in al-Aḥsāʾ and the desert margins about it. That is the whole of what this page asserts. It describes a historical section as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

The vowelling

The written form الدعوم is stable; its pronunciation is not, and the reports give it more than one reading. Where a name reaches a reference through speech rather than through a classical text, the spelling records the consonants and leaves the vowels open, and it is more honest to say so than to choose one reading and present it as settled.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root d-ʿ-m for propping and supporting: daʿama al-shayʾ is to prop a thing so that it does not fall, and al-diʿāmah is the post or pillar that holds up a roof, from which the word passes into figurative use for whoever holds up a household or a people. The lexicon explains the word. It does not say why any people came to be called by it, and no source this reference is permitted to cite connects the root to this section.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites do not document al-Duʿūm. They are all earlier than the arrangement of Banū Khālid in which the name appears, and none of them lists that tribe's sections. What is reported about al-Duʿūm comes from oral tradition and from later writing outside the permitted sources. Yāqūt can be cited for al-Aḥsāʾ and the eastern country as places, and it is the place being cited, not the section. Later writing also attaches to the sections named under Banū Khālid the political history of al-Aḥsāʾ and particular houses and families; this reference records none of that, and attaches no family to any name on this page.

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.