al-Raqībāt

Overview

al-Raqībāt — written الرقيبات, and commonly pronounced al-Rgaybāt in the Arabic of the western desert — is reported as a grouping of the western Sahara. The form of the name is a plural of a nisba, that is, the people of a man called al-Rgaybī or al-Raqībī, and that is how the reports explain it: descent from a forebear of that name, as reported. This page describes a historical grouping and makes no claim about any modern family.

The word

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root r-q-b for watching and guarding: raqaba, to watch or keep an eye on; al-raqīb, the watcher or the one set to guard; and al-raqaba, the neck. Diminutive forms of personal names on this root are ordinary in Arabic. The lexicon explains the word; it does not mention this grouping, and neither does Yāqūt's dictionary of places, which does not reach this far west in any useful detail.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites — Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī, Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr and Ibn Khaldūn — do not document al-Raqībāt. The grouping's present shape is later than all of them, and what is reported about it comes from oral tradition and from modern writing that lies outside the sources this reference is permitted to use. The page therefore records the name and its vowelling and nothing more. It does not record a descent, and it treats the name as the classical sources record it — which is to say, not at all. It does not enter later history.

On lineage

This page describes a historical tribe as the classical sources record it, and makes no claim about any modern family. Branch lists and affiliations are given as reported, and the genealogists differ among themselves. Nothing here 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.