Al-ʿUbayd

Overview

Al-ʿUbayd — written العبيد, commonly vowelled al-ʿUbayd — is reported of groups in the Tigris and Euphrates country of al-ʿIrāq. The reports do not agree on how to place it: some arrange it under Zubayd, others give it separately, and the arrangement shifts from one account to another. This page does not choose among them. It describes a historical name as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

A name borne by more than one group

ʿUbayd is the diminutive of ʿabd, and it is one of the commonest name-elements in Arabic. Groups called al-ʿUbayd, al-ʿUbaydāt and the like are reported in al-ʿIrāq, in the Levant, in the Peninsula and in North Africa, and there is no reason to suppose them one people. A reader who finds the name in a family record has found a name, not a line. Al-Jubūr is another name reported in the same region and likewise arranged under Zubayd in some accounts; it has its own page in this reference, and the two should not be run together.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root ʿ-b-d and gives ʿabd with its plurals, ʿubayd being its diminutive; the same root carries ʿibāda, worship, and ʿabd as one half of the commonest class of Arabic personal names. The lexicon explains the word. It does not say why a people came to be called by it, and it does not mention this group.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites — Ibn Ḥazm, al-Qalqashandī, al-Hamdānī, Yāqūt, Ibn Manẓūr and Ibn Khaldūn — do not document al-ʿUbayd. Its present shape is later than all of them by centuries, and what is reported about it comes from oral tradition and from later writing that lies outside the sources this reference is permitted to use. The arrangements reported for the name differ among themselves as well, which is a further reason to record the name rather than a structure. The page therefore records the name, the country it is reported in, and what the reports attach it to. It does not record a descent, and nothing on it should be read as one. The page keeps to the name and to what the classical works do and do not contain, and does not enter later history.

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.