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'It's Arabic'
What do zero, a giraffe, and alcohol have in common? Not much, other than all these words originate from Arabic, and are part of the huge heritage of language and knowledge that Europe has absorbed from the Arabs over the centuries.
Shufti: “Take a shufti” is how thousands of English soldiers described ‘taking a look’ when they were posted to Second World War Cairo or later in South Yemen in the 1950s and 1960s, taking the word back to Britain with them.
Lute is a direct transliteration of Al Oud, which is the Arabic for the same instrument. Musicians might argue about how many strings are appropriate, but Spain had its alod in the 1200s, and the first definite English reference was by the late 1300s.
Started with Al Kimiya, meaning alchemy, which is how it arrived in Europe in a book by Plato Tiburtinus, after which the medieval skills of alchemy gave way to the modern disciplines of chemistry.
Arsenal is based on Dar Al Sina’a, the House of Manufacturing, and was first used in English in the Fifteenth Century, when it described a dock-yard for repairing ships, which meaning is still used by the Italians with the fuller word darsana.
Algebra comes from Al Jabr, meaning to restore broken parts. Its mathematical meaning started with the definitive tome, “Al-kitāb al-mukhta’ar fī’isāb al-jabr wa al-muqābala, by the 9th century mathematician Al Khwarizmi.
Giraffe – was known to the Arabic lexicographer, Al Jawahiri, as Al Zarafa, which he rather briefly dismissed as “a type of creature’. Later biologists linked the name more firmly to the long-necked beast of Africa which we all know today.
Admiral – comes from Amir Al Bihar, meaning Commander of the Seas, which was a first title used in Norman Sicily. The ‘D’ was added in Elizabethan England, by court officials ignorant of Arabic. The French still use amiral.
Francis Matthew
Gulf News