Al-Ḥumūm

Overview

Al-Ḥumūm — written الحموم — is reported in Ḥaḍramawt: in the eastern valleys that run down from the plateau, and along the coast eastward toward the country of Mahra. Ḥaḍramawt itself is an old and well-documented region — a long inner valley with its side wadis, a barren plateau on either hand, and a narrow coast beneath — and the classical books describe it and name the tribes they knew in it. This name is not among the names they give. This page describes a historical group as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

What the old books do name in Ḥaḍramawt

The tribes the classical genealogists and al-Hamdānī name in that country are Kinda and its divisions, al-Ṣadif, and their neighbours eastward toward Mahra. Later reports variously attach al-Ḥumūm to one or another of these, and they do not agree among themselves; no source this reference may cite makes the connection. Recording that the reports differ, and declining to choose between them, is the honest limit of what a page like this can do.

The name

The root ḥ-m-m carries heat and blackness together. Ibn Manẓūr gives al-ḥamīm for hot water, al-ḥummā for the fever, al-ḥumam for charcoal and what is burnt black, and aḥamm for the black. Al-Ḥumūm is a plural in form. The lexicon accounts for the word; it does not account for the naming of the 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-Ḥumūm. Al-Hamdānī and Yāqūt are citable for Ḥaḍramawt and its valleys, that is, for the country; they are not citable for this group, and nothing in them should be read as though they were. What is reported about al-Ḥumūm comes from later and oral tradition and from modern writing outside the permitted sources. The page records the name and the country it is reported in; it records no descent.

What this page does not say

The later history of Ḥaḍramawt 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.