Bā ʿAlawī or Āl Bā ʿAlawī, a prominent clan of South Arabian sayyids, many of them distinguished scholars and Sufis, living primarily in Ḥaḍramawt and in the town of Tarīm in particular.

The clan’s name refers to an eponymous forebear, ʿAlawī b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad. According to the sources, the first member of the clan was Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn al-ʿAlawī (d. 345/956), the chief of the ʿAlids of Ḥaḍramawt, who traced his lineage back to Imam ʿAlī via Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq. He was born into a family of scholars in Baṣra and subsequently em…