Recently, I chanced upon a seductively aesthetic site, beautifully laid out, mostly in Arabic, where the page I discovered seemed devoted to a presentation of a long list of English words that have Arabic derivations. As one scans down the list and lingers here and there, one may say to oneself, "Hm, very interesting...!" For example:
Admiral: amir-lbahr أمير البحر
Adobe: al-tuba الطوبة
Alchemy: al-kimia الكيمياء
Alcohol: al-kuhl الكحل
[and, of course, what list of Arabic-derived words would be comprehensive without mentioning...]
Algebra: al-jabr الجبر
[not to mention...]
Algorithm: al-khwarizmi الخوارزمي (لوغارتم-علم اللوغارتمات)
[and, of course...]
Almanac: almanakh المناخ
Assassin: hashashin الحشاشين
[or...]
Genie: jinni جنّي
[and some we had suspected...]
Jasmine: yasmin ياسمين
Mocha: mukha مخا
Nadir: nazir as-samt نظير الصمت
[But as we undulate further on our caravan camel, we are again surprised...]
Apricot: al-barquq البرقوق
Arsenal: dar al-sinaa دار الصناعة
Artichoke: al-khurshuf الخرشوف
Borax: buraq بورق
Caliber: qalibقالب
Candy: qand قند
Checkmate: al-shash mat الشاه مات
Cotton: qutn قطن
Gerbil: yarbu يربوع
Ghoul: gul غول
Guitar: qitar قيتار
Hazard: al-zahr الزهر
Jacket: shakka شك
Magazine: makhazin مخازن
Mattress: matrah مطرح
Massage: massمسّ
Sherbet: sharbat شربة
Sofa: suffa صفّة
Spinach: isbanakh
[And so forth... We also encounter along the way orientally beguiling samples that make sense in a 'Midnight at the Oasis' sort of way...]
Mascara: maskhara مسخرة
Saffron: zafaran زعفران
Satin: zaytuni زيتوني
Scarlet: siqillat سقلات
Azure: azward azward أزورد
Carmine: qirmiz قرمز
Cinnabar: zinjafr زنجفر
Crimson: qirmizi قرمزي
Elixir: al-iksir الإكسير
[And now for the delicious pièce de résistance... for which the reader should know two things: 1) that the English word drub means "to beat, to thrash"; and 2) that Koran 4:34 records Allah instructing Muslim men to beat or thrash their wives, according to the Arabic word (as we shall shortly see) provided in this lovely lexical litany I have been quoting as the wonderful source of that English word that conjures up 19th-century louts in a Dickensian past beating or thrashing their wives...]
Drub: darab ضرب
[Thus the perniciously ugly swamp of Islam behind the mirage of the shimmering chatoyance of its apologetic veil...]
2 comments:
I can't say whether this particular site suffers from the following malady, but I can say that far too many Muslim and Arab oriented sites exaggerate or just plain lie about Muslim and Arab "contributions" to the West.
It's pretty evident that that site I linked and quoted from in my article (www.hawalah.net) positively reeks of Islamophilia and Dawa.
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