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(a.), the empty, translation of the Sanskrit śūnya in Hindu-Arabic arithmetic, the name for zero, and the origin of the western words cipher, cifra, Ziffcr, chiffre and zero with their derivatives ( decipher, etc.). The question of the introduction or invention of the figures and of the zero has in spite of all palaeographical ¶ research and study of the history of mathematics not yet been satisfactorily explained. In the oldest documents known to us, the Arabs, when they do not write out the numbers in full, use Greek numerals. Only at a later dat…

, the wolf, is described as extremely malignant, quarrelsome and cunning. When a large number of wolves are together, no one separates from the flock as they do not trust one another; when one becomes weak or is wounded it is eaten by the others. When asleep they keep the right and left eye open alternately to keep a watch on one another. When a wolf is not a match for an opponent, it howls till others come ¶ to its help; but when one becomes ill, it separates from the others, because it knows they will devour it when they see it is ill. When a wolf has designs on a flock…

, any simple instrument for measuring, e.g. the pointer on a sundial; in Egypt the name of the Nilometer, i.e. the gauge on which the regular rise and fall of the river can be read. To get an undisturbed surface, the water was led into a basin; in the centre of this stood the water gauge, a column on which ells and fingers were carefully measured off. The level of the water was ascertained by an official daily and proclaimed by criers. Originally the rising of the Nile was measured by the gauge ( al-raṣāṣa). According to Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥaḳam, al-Ḳuḍāʿī, and others, Joseph, the son of Jacob,…

, gold, is among metals as the sun among the planets. It is formed by the most perfect amalgamation of the purest sulphur and the finest quicksilver so that it is easily smelted by fire but is not consumed nor does it became rusty no matter how long it may lie in the ground. It is soft, yellow with a tinge of red, bright, sweet to taste, pleasant to smell and exceedingly heavy. It is the magnet of quicksilver and sinks in it; quicksilver deprives it of its colour. Gold may be cast or wrought wit…

, the name of a very old Persian fire-temple, a place or district S. E of Lake Urmiya in Ad̲j̲barbāid̲j̲ān, said to be the native place of Zoroaster. According to A. V. W. Jackson the name is said to be derived from the Avestan name of Lake Urmiya, Čaečasta; according to Yāḳūt it is an Arabic corruption of Ḏj̲azn or Gazn i. e. Kanzaka or Gazaca of the classical writers or Gand̲j̲ak of the Pehlevi texts. The older geographers consider the two names distinct. A comparison of the description given by Yāḳūt from Misʿar b. Muhalhil (about 940) with the ruins which are now called Tak̲h̲t-i Sulaimān shows …

, the elephant, also called al-Zanaabīl, which latter name is applied to the smaller animals or according to some writers the females. In spite of its bulk and heavy figure it is one of the swiftest and most mobile of animals. As its neck is very short it has a long trunk of cartilage, flesh and sinew, which is of the same use to it as hands to man. With it it carries food and water to its mouth; it can move it round its whole body and fights with it. Its two ears are like shields; it flaps them cons…

, Sandalwood. According to al-Nuwairī, numerous varieties are distinguished. The majority, especially the white, yellow and red kinds, are used for the manufacture of fragrant powders on account of their pleasant smell; they are also used in medicine, while other varieties again are used by turners and furniture-makers or for the manufacture of chessmen, etc. At the present day the pterocarpus imported from Southern Asia, the ¶ islands of the Malay Archipelago and Africa is used for fine furniture and the waste as dye-woods. (J. Ruska) Bibliography O. Warburg, Die Pflanzenwelt, ii. 2…

(Mod. Pers. dahna), Malachite, green copper ore. The description of this mineral in the Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafā may be traced to the Petrology of Aristotle. It is said to be formed in the copper mines from the sulphur dust which combines with the copper and forms stratified layers. It is a soft mineral and shows the greatest variety of all shades of green. Tīfās̲h̲ī, following Balīnās, says that dahnad̲j̲, lāzward and s̲h̲ād̲h̲anad̲j̲, i, e. malachite, copper lazuli [not lapis lazuli here] and red copper ore (not red iron ore, hematite) were originally copper, which firs…

, Kankiwar, Kangavar, a little district with a town of the same name and about 30 villages between Hamadān and Ḳarmīsīn. The town has about 2,500 inhabitants; in its vicinity is a famous castle, Ḳaṣr al-Luṣūṣ or Ḳaṣr Duzdān, the “robber castle”; it is said to take its name from the fact that several animals were stolen from the Muslims at the conquest; Ṭab. i. 2649. (J. Ruska) Bibliography B. G. A., i. 195; ii. 256; iii. 393 Barbier de Meynard, Dict. de la Perse, p. 450—451 Le Strange, Lands, p. 188 sq. Flaudin, Voyage, i. 408 sqq.

, the he - goat, more particularly a he-goat one year old. Ḳazwīnī gives only a few notes under the article maʿz (goat) on its natural history. Goats have thick skin and thin hair unlike sheep which have thin skin and are protected from cold by a thick covering of wool. When the he-goat sees a young lion, he approaches it slowly, but when he smells it, he falls into a stupor and lies as if dead till the lion departs. It eats tarantulas without harm and becomes fat on them. Its uses in medicine are numerous; Ḳazwīnī gives the Kitāb al-Ḵh̲awāṣṣ of Balīnās as his authority for them. In Astronomy, al-Ḏj̲ady …

(a.), pl. of al-manzil, more fully manāzil al-ḳamar, the stations of the moon. Just as for the sun the zodiacal circle is divided into 12 stations each of 30°, which it traverses in the course of a year, so the course of the moon is connected with 28 groups of stars, each of which corresponds to one day of its course, so that on an average each is an arc of 13° apart. The settings of the sun at these stations, Arabic nawʾ, pl. anwāʾ, are of decisive importance for the beginning and forecasting of the phenomena of the weather and the fertility or otherwise of a year which depend…

, the eagle, the king of birds. al-Ḳazwīnī and al-Damīrī tell remarkable things about his habits, some of which go back to Greek tradition. According to al-Damīrī, there are black, brown, greenish and white eagles. Some nest in the mountains, others in deserts, in thick woods or in the vicinity of towns. (Here there is of course a confusion with the vulture and also in the statement that they follow armies and devour the fallen). The eagle hunts small wild animals and birds and eats only the liv…

, from Pers. s̲h̲akar or s̲h̲akkar, from Sanskrit çarkarā, Prakrit sakkarā, the sap crushed from the sugar-cane ( ḳaṣab al-sukkar) and solid sugar. Vullers (ii. 439) gives the following from the Bh: s̲h̲akkar is in the technical language of the physicians the sap of a plant, similar to the reed ( nay) but not hollow between the nodes, which becomes solid on boiling. It is given different names in different stages of preparation. Thus for example, when not yet purified (simply solidified) it is called s̲h̲akkar surk̲h̲ (red sugar); when it is boiled a second time and purified by b…

(a.), the spider. Al-Ḳazwīnī and al-Damīrī mention several species, the most dangerous of which is the poisonous tarantula, al-Rutailāʾ or al-Rut̲h̲ailāʾ. Al-Damīrī also describes a fieldspider of reddish colour with fine hair on its body; at the head it has four claws with which it bites; it digs a nest in the ground, and seizes its prey by night. The weaving spiders make their ¶ webs according to mathematical rules; according to some the male spins the warp and the female the worf; according to others the female only is capable of making a web; as material…

— frequently regarded as a determined noun ( al-mās; correctly al-Almās according to Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, in Lisān viii. 97: the ’l belongs to the root as in Ilyās), a corrupt form from the Greek ἀδάμαΣ ( l. c. “ wa-laisat bi-ʿarabīya”), — the diamond. According to the pseudo-Aristotelian Kitāb al-aḥd̲j̲ār which — on the basis of cognate Greek sources, — agrees in the main with the statements of Pliny, the diamond cuts every solid except lead, by which it is itself destroyed. On the frontier of Ḵh̲orāsān is a deep valley in which the diamonds lie g…

, the revelation of secret alchemistic teaching ascribed to Hermes Trismegistos. Known in a later version in the west since the middle of the xiith century, the origin of the text was until recently an unsolved problem in the history of chemistry. Since R. Steele in his edition of Bacon (1920) showed that the text of the Tabula existed in Arabic and Latin in the Sirr al-Asrār of Pseudo-Aristotle, and E. J. Holmyard in 1923 discovered a more primitive form of the text in the Kitāb al-Uṣṭuḳuss al-t̲h̲ānī of Ḏj̲ābir b. Ḥaiyān, J. Ruska has been able to show that the original source o…

, the common name for the white and yellow-red lily and for the blue iris which is more precisely described by the addition of asmānd̲j̲ūnī and is also called īrisā by the physicians. The name is a general Semitic one, but whether from s̲h̲es̲h̲ (six), as Low suggests, seems to me doubtful on account of the ū or ō always found in it. The root of Iris ftorcntina L. is still used in medicine. (J. Ruska) Bibliography Ibn al-Baiṭār, transl. Leclerc, ii. 306 al-Ḳazwīnī, ʿAd̲j̲āʾib al-Mak̲h̲lūḳāt, ed. Wüstenfeld, i., p. 276 I. Löw, Die Flora der Juden, ii. I—4, 160—184.

, Bawraḳ, Būraḳ, borax. The description in Ḳazwīnī shows that the most different salts were confused under the general name of borax; he mentions natron as a kind of borax; i.e. the Armenian borax, the borax of the metal-founders, tinkār, which is brought from India, bakers’ borax, the borax of Zerāwand and of Kirmān. Even in the Petrology of Aristotle the peculiar property of borax is said to be that it melts all bodies, hastens smelting and facilitates casting. Natron is particularly mentioned in this connection as a kind of borax; tinkār is said to…

— Arab, fad̲h̲zuhr, from the Persian Pā(w)zahr, i. e. removing poison — a highly esteemed remedy against all kinds of poison for which high prices were paid throughout the middle ages down to the xviiith century and to the present day in the East. The real (Oriental) bezoarstone is obtained from the Persian bezoar-goat ( Capra aegagrus Gm.) and according to Wöhler’s researches is a gallstone. A description of its properties and supposed effects is to be found as early as in the Kitāb al-Aḥd̲j̲ār, which is ascribed to Aristotle. The effect of poisons is to make the blood coagula…

(a.), the crab; the name is applied to the fresh water crab as well as to the sea-crabs, saraṭān nahrī and baḥrī. Al-Damīrī describes the crab as follows: “it can run very quickly, has two jaws, claws and several teeth and a back as hard as stone; one might think that it had neither head nor tail. Its two eyes are placed on its shoulders, its mouth is in its chest and its jaws are sideways. It has eight legs and walks on one side. It breathes both air and water. It casts off its skin six times a year. It builds itse…