 Like the "Sadah" (plural of Sayyid), Ashraf often take their names from ancestry from Muhammad, Fatima and Ali and have in many Muslim societies "Ashraf" evolved into an honorific denoting "master" or "gentry".More precisely, the Ashraf are descendants of Ali's elder son, Hassan, and the "Sadah" those of Ali's younger son Husayn.During the Abbasid period, the term was applied to all Ahl al-Bayt, basically Muhammad's own family, including, for example, the descendants of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya, of Ali's second wife and of the Hashemites.