Alavi (surname)

The surname Alvi (Arabic: علوي‎‎) signifies ancestry from Ali ibn Abi Talib (Arabic: علي بن أﺑﻲ طالب‎‎), the fourth Caliph of Sunni Islam. Ali was the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and titled Amir al-Mu'minin (Arabic: أمیر المؤمنین‎‎) (Commander of the Faithful) by his followers.

The Alvi Awans, are a South Asian community that trace their origin from Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib through his son Al-Abbas ibn Ali, who was the Commander at the Battle of Karbala. It is also believed to have gone through Qutb Shah, the famous general of Mahmud Ghazni who conquered most part of Herat, Afghanistan, and Khorasan. Contrary to this a small number of scholars have argued that Awans were a part of the local Hindu population of the Punjab region of Medieval India, who embraced Islam after the Islamic invasion of India.

The lineage of the common ancestor of the Qutb-Shahi Awans goes as follows;

Ali ibn Abi Talib Al Abbas ibn Ali Ubaidullah Hassan Hamza Jaffar Ali Qasim At-Tyar Abu Ya'la Hamza Al Hashmi ibn Ya'la Al Alawi Al Baghdadi Abdullah Awn (ibn Ya'la) Qutb Shah

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