Wadāʿah

Overview

Wadāʿah — written وداعة — is reported as one of the sections of Qaḥṭān, with its country placed in the south of Najd and the borderlands toward ʿAsīr. This page describes a historical section as reported, and makes no claim about any modern family.

Wadāʿah and Wādiʿah are not one entry

A name of nearly the same shape, Wādiʿah — written وادعة, with an alif after the wāw — is entered in the classical books among the divisions of Hamdān in the north of Yemen, and has its own page in this reference. The two are close enough in writing that a copyist can turn one into the other, and casual writing regularly does. They are recorded here as separate names, because that is what the sources support: an old Yemeni division on the one hand, a section reported under Qaḥṭān in Najd on the other, with no source this reference may cite joining them. Saying that a name is borne by more than one group, and declining to merge them, is the most useful service a page like this performs.

The name

Ibn Manẓūr enters the root w-d-ʿ for leaving and for settledness: al-daʿa is ease and quiet, and the man described as wādiʿ is unhurried and at rest. The lexicon accounts for the word, in both spellings; it does not account for the naming of either group, and this page does not invent one.

On sources

The classical works this reference cites do not document Wadāʿah as a section of Qaḥṭān. That arrangement is later than all six, and what is reported about it comes from oral tradition and from modern writing outside the permitted sources. Al-Hamdānī and Yāqūt are citable for the Yemeni and Najdī country respectively — the places, not this section — and that is the limit of the citation here. The page records a name and keeps it distinct from a similar one; it records no descent.

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.