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Authors:
I. Goldziher
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C. van Arendonk
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A.S. Tritton
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(1,350 words)

, āl al-bayt , "the people of the House", āl al-nabī , "the family of the Prophet", all mean the same; the term Āl Yāsīn also occurs. The origin of the phrase is to be found in the strong clan sense of the pre-Islamic Arabs, among whom the term al-bayt was applied to or adopted by the ruling family of a tribe (by derivation from an ancient right of guardianship of the symbol of the tribal deity, according to H. Lammens, Le Culte des Bétyles , in L’Arabic occidentale avant l’Hégire , Beirut 1928, 136 ff., 154 ff.), and survived into later centuries in the plural form al-buyūtāt for the noble tribal families [see ahl al-buyūtat and āl]. In early Islamic times the term bayt was applied to themselves by a number of families, e.g. by ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar to the house of ʿUmar (Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam, Sīrat ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz , Cairo 1927, 19), and by ʿUmar II to the Umayyad house ( innamā al-Ḥad̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ u minnā ahl a ’l-bayt d : ibid. 24). In the Ḳurʾān the phrase ahl a ’l-bayt d occurs twice: once in xi, 73, applied to the house of Ibrāhīm; the second passage, xxxiii, 33 ("God desires only to remove filthiness from you (masc. pl.), ahl a ’l-bayt d , and with cleansing to cleanse you"), serves as the proof-text for its application to the house of Muḥammad (but see R. Paret, in Orientalische Studien Enno Littmann….überreicht , Leiden 1935, 127-20).
Title:
Ahl al-Bayt
Encyclopaedia of Islam New Edition Online (EI-2 English)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_0378
Language:
English
Source Editors:
P.J. Bearman
First-online:
24 Apr 2012
ISSN:
1573-3912
Publisher:
Brill

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