Index

‘IT’S ARABIC’

‘IT’S ARABIC’

‘IT’S ARABIC’

SHUFTI

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. It is derived from the Arabic word shofti.

 

LUTE

Lute is a direct transliteration of 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.

 

CHEMISTRY

Started with al kimya'a, 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

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

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 Khawarizmi.

 

GIRAFFE

Giraffe - was known to the Arabic lexicographer, 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

Admiral - comes from the Arabic word 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.

 

Adil Salami

As-Salam correspondent

2026-10-01 (Rabi-ul-ahir 1448) №10.


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