(a.) masculine noun (pl. ansur , nusūr , nisār ) denoting the vulture irrespective of species; the term is cognate with Akkadian nas̲h̲ru which is also encountered in the Hebrew nes̲h̲er (Turkish akbaba , Persian dāl , Berber tamādda ). From the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, in the lands of Islam eight species of vulture are known, almost all of them resident and localised in mountainous regions and at the desert fringes. Four of these species are common there, and they are: (a) The Egyptian vulture ( Neophron percnopterus ); this is the oripelargus of Pliny which was formerly known as Catharte …

(a.), any being or thing which is able to live or to fly above the ground level, either as a matter of function or for finding sustenance. Hence immense numbers of insects and birds are covered by the doublet ṭāʾir/ṭayr (pis. ṭuyūr , atyār ). Moreover, with the advent of modern inventions, the root is also used for any machine or contrivance for flying ( ṭayarān ), and the flight of such contrivances as aeroplanes and airships ( ṭayyāra , ṭāʾira ), space ships and rockets and planetary satellites launched from an air-field ( maṭār ). By analogy, ṭayyāra can also denote a swiftly-running ship. Among…

(a.), pls. aʿḳub , ʿiḳbān , ʿuḳbān , ʿaḳābīn , a fem. noun denoting the eagle in all its species. The eagle has the tecnonyms of Abu ’l-as̲h̲yam “father of the one with the mole or beauty spot”; Abu ’l-ḥud̲j̲d̲j̲ād̲j̲ “the man with the pilgrims”, i.e. of Mecca, since it follows the caravans making their way there in order to feed on the remains of corpses, of humans and their mounts, left en-route; Abu ’l-ḥasan “the fine one”; Abu ’l-dahr “the long-lived one”; Abu ’l-hayt̲h̲am “the eaglet’s father”; and Abu ’l-kāsir “the breaker of bones”. The female is called Umm al-hawār …

, (Arabic), denotes “the art of the flying-hunt”, and is not restricted to the designation of “falconry”. (Its Persian origin (from bāz : goshawk; see below) is more closely related to the notion of “ostring art”). Derived from bayzār , “ostringer”, an Arabicised form of the Persian bāzyār/bāzdār , it was preferred to its dual form bāzdara ; the words bāziyya and biyāza were scarcely used in the Muslim Occident. The use of rapacious predatories ( kāsir , pi. kawāsir ) as “beasts of prey” I ( d̲j̲āriḥ , pi. d̲j̲awāriḥ ) was undoubtedly known to the Arabs before Is…

and isṭabl (a.; pl. iṣṭablāt and rarely aṣābil , according to LA, s.v.), etymologically stable , that is to say the building in which mounts and baggage animals (equidae and camelidae) are kept tethered and, by metonomy, the actual stock of such animais belonging to one single owner. Iṣṭabl is the arabization of the low-Greek στάβλον/σταβλíον/σταυλíον(see Du Cange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae graecitatis , Lyons 1688, s.v.), which ¶ in turn derives from the Latin stabulum . This is one of the so-called terms “of civilization” which hav…