Al-Ṣadif

Overview

Al-Ṣadif is recorded in Ḥaḍramawt, and it is one of the clearest cases in the Yemeni chapters of a tribe the sources cannot place in one line. The genealogists commonly enter it under Kinda, reckoning it to Mālik ibn Murtiʿ and reporting that his given name was ʿAmr and that al-Ṣadif was a byname; Lisān al-ʿArab, entering the word, says a tribe of Ḥimyar, and then adds that it is said to be of Kinda. Both readings are old, neither is decided in the books, and a page that presented one of them as the fact would be misrepresenting its own sources. This page describes a historical tribe as the classical sources record it, and makes no claim about any modern family.

The name

The root ṣ-d-f in the lexicon is turning aside: ṣadafa ʿanhu is to turn away from a thing. The compilers who report al-Ṣadif as a byname explain it in exactly those terms, that the man turned away from his people, which is the same kind of explanation the sources give for al-Nakhaʿ. The lexicographers also record al-ṣadaf for a high thing, the face of a mountain or the like. The vowelling of the tribal name is itself disputed between the transmitters, which is why the word is written in more than one shape.

The name is not the ṣadaf of a seashell that a modern reader meets first. The two are separate entries in the lexicon and nothing follows from the resemblance.

In the genealogical tradition

Where a branch or an affiliation is given for al-Ṣadif it is given as the sources report it, and the reader should hold the Kindī and Ḥimyarī placements side by side rather than choosing between them. This is not a defect in the transmission so much as its ordinary condition: the genealogists were collecting reports of who a people said they were, at a remove of generations, and where two accounts survived they recorded two.

Where the name travelled

Sections of al-Ṣadif are recorded moving with the Yemeni contingents into Egypt at the conquest, and a quarter of Fusṭāṭ is named for them; the nisba al-Ṣadafī is common in the biographical literature of Egypt in particular. As with Tujīb, a nisba taken from a quarter is a weak guide to descent, since residence, alliance (ḥilf) and clientage (walāʾ) all yield the same word.

On lineage

Branch lists and affiliations here are given as reported by the classical genealogists, who themselves disagree. 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.