Banū al-ʿAtīk

Overview

al-ʿAtīk is one of the sections the genealogists reckon to al-Azd, named in the Azdī chapters and recorded in ʿUmān and then, after the conquests, in Baṣra and eastward in Khurāsān. Ibn Ḥazm follows houses from it that rose to prominence in those provinces, which is why its nisba is met far more often in histories and biographical dictionaries than in accounts of the desert. This page describes a historical section and makes no claim about any modern family.

The nisba in the books

al-ʿAtakī is among the commonest Azdī nisbas in the biographical literature, and its frequency is a caution rather than a proof. The compilers of those books attached a nisba for several reasons: descent, alliance and clientage all produced the same word, and they added a qualification such as mawlāhum when they knew a man was a client. Where they did not know, they wrote the nisba plain. A page of transmitters carrying al-ʿAtakī therefore records association with the name, and the reasons behind it are not uniform.

The name

The lexicographers refer ʿatīk to the root ʿ-t-k, which they give more than one sense: ʿataka meaning to press on or bear down in an attack, and al-ʿātik used of something reddened, as of a bow darkened with age. They do not choose between these when explaining the name, and neither does this reference.

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.