ʿĀmila

Overview

ʿĀmila is entered by the genealogists in the same corner of the Kahlān line as Lakhm and Judhām, and the three are named together often enough that a reader meeting one expects the others. Beyond that agreement the reports diverge, and the divergence is the most instructive thing on this page. This page describes a historical tribe and makes no claim about any modern family.

A name reported as a mother's

Some genealogists enter ʿĀmila as a man in the line, a son placed beside ʿAdī. Others report that ʿĀmila was a woman — the mother whose name her descendants carried, so that the tribe is called after her rather than after their father. Both are in the tradition, and neither can be shown from the other.

The second report is worth dwelling on because readers assume that an Arab tribal name is always a father's. It is usually so, but not always: the genealogists themselves record a small number of groups called by a mother's name, and they note it when they know it. A modern reader tracing a name backward should therefore not assume that every name in a chain is a male ancestor, and should not treat a female name in the sources as an error to be corrected.

Recorded country

The geographers place ʿĀmila in the southern Levant, and Yāqūt records that the mountain country there took the tribe's name from the group that settled it. That is the reverse of the usual direction, in which a tribe takes its name from its water or its mountain, and it is a firmer association than a lineage claim: the name of a place is written down by everyone who passes through, whatever they believe about descent.

The name

The root ʿ-m-l is among the most ordinary in the language — al-ʿamal is work, a trade, a deed done — and ʿāmila is the ordinary feminine active participle from it. Ibn Manẓūr records the word in that plain sense. The lexicographers do not derive the tribal name from the verb, and this reference reports the root without building anything on it.

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 by the classical genealogists, who themselves disagree. 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.