Shann

Overview

Shann is entered by the genealogists beside Lukayz as the second son of Afṣā ibn ʿAbd al-Qays, and the two names carry the tribe between them. Ibn Ḥazm keeps them at the same tier and al-Qalqashandī follows him. Shann is the smaller limb in the lists — most of the sections recorded on the eastern coast are entered under Lukayz — but it is the better known of the two names outside genealogy altogether, because of a proverb.

The country is the country of the tribe: the seaboard Yāqūt calls al-Khaṭṭ, with al-Qaṭīf among its towns, running inland toward Hajar and the oasis country of al-Aḥsāʾ.

The vowelling and the word

Shann is one syllable, a fatḥa on the shīn and a doubled nūn: shann. In Lisān al-ʿArab the word is entered under sh-n-n with a plain concrete sense — al-shann is a waterskin gone old and worn, its plural shinān — and the lexicographers note that water is colder in a worn skin than a new one, which is why the poets use it. The same root gives the verb used of a raid: shanna al-ghāra is to scatter and spread a raid over a country rather than drive it at one point.

So Shann is a word before it is a name, and readers meet it in both senses in the same books. This is the ordinary condition of the older Arab names, and the lexicographers say nothing that would let a meaning be read back onto a tribe.

The proverb

The best-known thing about the name is the saying wāfaqa Shannun Ṭabaqah — Shann has met his match, said of two things that fit each other exactly, as a lid fits its vessel. The compilers do not agree on where it comes from, and the disagreement is old. One account makes Shann a group of ʿAbd al-Qays and Ṭabaq another people whom they met and matched. Another makes Shann a man who set out to find a wife of his own shrewdness and found her, Ṭabaqa by name. A third takes the whole thing from the vessel and its cover, with no man and no tribe in it at all. Lisān al-ʿArab carries more than one of these side by side, which is the honest position, and the page keeps it: the proverb is genuinely attached to the name, and its origin is not settled.

Names easily confused

Shann is not Shanūʾa. Azd Shanūʾa is a Yemeni name from a different root and a different tribe altogether, and the resemblance is only in the first two letters. Nor is the tribal name to be read as the common noun wherever it appears: a source that says shann in a line of poetry is usually talking about a waterskin.

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 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.