Idilinaa
VIP
What backing would my claim need. People have posted dozens of times on here about how this nisba is somali.
The idea that we somehow need to give to proof that scholars with a nisba from a somali city are actually somali and not arab/ethiosemetic. Is an insane position to hold and goes beyond mere skepticism.
The name originated from the city of Zayla, but it was later used by Somalis as an ethnic identifier similar to how "Roman" originally referred to someone from the city of Rome but eventually came to represent a broader identity.
Another example of this can be seen with a 13th-century Somali scholar from the town of Badda, located in the Nugaal region (as confirmed by Al-Idrisi’s map, also by the ruins still called by that name ), who also used the nisba.
One source states :
"The righteous jurist Abu al-Hasan Ali bin Abu Bakr bin Muhammad al-Zayla’i al-Uqayli died... their original town was Batta, a town among the many towns in Al-Habasha, and that is why they are called Banu al-Zayla’i."
Just to clarify: Al-Habasha was a broad geographical term used for the Horn of Africa. However, only those from the highlands typically used it as a nisba. In contrast, individuals identified as al-Jabarti (a regional name for northwestern areas) or al-Zayla’i (used as an ethnic identifier) were clearly differentiated in Arabic sources from highland Habashis.