Enjoy!
Khaled Ahmed
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_2-11-2003_pg3_7
Navigation was once the monopoly of the seagoing Arabs. The names of stars and winds have been contributed by them. Winds like ‘simoom’, ‘sirocco’ and ‘monsoon’ (via Portuguese) have been named by them. Admiral is a changed form of ‘amir al-bahar’
The October issue of the monthly journal of the national language authority in Islamabad, Akhbar-e-Urdu, has carried a very interesting article by Dr Rauf Parekh on the Arabic words contained in English. What is exciting is the discovery that many words we thought purely English are actually Arabic!
‘Imports’ like Persian karvan (caravan) and Hindi champi (shampoo) are well known, but spinach, which came via Spanish, is actually from Arabic-Andalusian asfanaj. We know that algebra is from Arabic jabr, so are the names of many stars, like aldeberan.
The truth is that since navigation was once the monopoly of the seagoing Arabs, the names of stars and winds have been contributed by them. Winds like simoom, sirocco and monsoon (via Portuguese) have been named by them. Admiral is a changed form of amir al-bahar.
Once upon a time, the Arabs were deeply into chemistry or alchemy or al-kimiya. Related words like alembic (anbiq), alakali (alqali) and carafe (gharafa) have come from them.
English garble today means to mix up and confuse. Originally it meant to pass through a sieve. Old records show Englishmen buying spices and then garbling them or cleaning them up through sieving.
Those who know their Persian would say that gharbal is actually sieve but it got into Persian from Arabic. Was it really Arabic in origin or got there after the Arabs saw it in Latin cribellum? Be that as it may, English got its garble from Arabic.
Arsenal is where military storehouses are located. British soccer team Arsenal get their name from Woolwich, their original home south of London where such a storehouse once existed. The word came from Italian but the Italians got it from Arabic dar al-sana’a, the last word being used today by us in san’at (industry). Originally it simply meant house of manufacture.
It should be exciting to know that tariff, the tax we impose on imports was also coined by the seagoing Arabs who called it ta’rif (designation). We use it in Urdu for praise because when we designate someone in regard to his good qualities it is praise.
English word average is also derived from the Arabic seagoing vocabulary. The Arabs first called it ‘awariya from ‘awar which meant to damage. This was the process of setting aside goods damaged in transit on the sea. The damage loss was equally shared by all involved in the transaction. In the 17trh century English had got the word for arriving at the average of damage for all parties.
The highest point in heaven was called simt al-ras by the Arabs. It became zenith in English. The lowest pint by contrast was called simt al-nazeer. This became nadir (lowest point) in English.
Qand is Arabic for sugar but it may have come from Sanskrit where its root means white. English candy is derived from it through French. The original word could be Dravidian because in Tamil it is called kattu. Urdu has probably got it in gatta.
Arabic got its cipher (zero) from India and passed it on to the West as cypher. The Roman numerals that we still write ceremonially don’t have a zero. (That’s why we had such trouble deciding whether 2000 was actually 2001 on the calendar made by zero-less Romans!)
Gala which today means festive occasion once meant dressing up. It got its current meaning only in the 18th century. Gala came to Spanish from Arabic khal’a meaning dress. In Urdu our history often tells us that a king gave khal’at to so-and-so he wanted honoured.
The article tells us that some words have travelled in the opposite direction. Greek words like philosophy and history (astur) have gone into Arabic when the Arabs of Baghdad were getting steeped in Greek learning.
The contact could be older and Quranic. Arabic lugha (word) is from Greek logos. Dictionary in Urdu is called lughat. *