Lujaym

Overview

Lujaym is met in the genealogies less as a tribe with a country of its own than as a node from which two well-known groups are reckoned: he is given as Lujaym ibn Ṣaʿb ibn ʿAlī ibn Bakr ibn Wāʾil, and from him the sources trace Ḥanīfa ibn Lujaym and ʿIjl ibn Lujaym. The later histories of the two are recorded far apart — Ḥanīfa is placed in the palm country of al-Yamāma, ʿIjl in the marches toward Iraq — which makes Lujaym a useful illustration of how a single name in the chain can stand above groups a reader would never otherwise connect. It belongs at the level the vocabulary calls a jadd jāmiʿ, a gathering ancestor, and it is encountered inside those compound names more often than on its own.

The form of the name is worth noticing: Lujaym is a diminutive, understood from the root l-j-m, of the bridle and the restraining of a mount. Diminutive names are common in this material — ʿUqayl, Kulayb, Suwayd — and they are a habit of Arab naming rather than a judgement on the bearer; the diminutive in Arabic carries affection and familiarity as readily as smallness.

This page describes a name in the historical genealogies. It makes no claim about any modern family, and nothing here places any living family under it.

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 (ṣarīḥ), alliance (ḥilf) or clientage (walāʾ), and the sources usually say which only when they know.