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or Siḳilliyya , Arabic adaptation of the Greek Σικελία (with the variants noted by Yāḳūt, iii, 406), as a name of the island of Sicily (but sometimes used to indicate the city of Palermo alone). Al-Bakrī (482, § 812), following the classical sources, gives the mythic etymology evoking the eponymous Sīkūl(os), brother of Īṭāl(os), while also supplying, in what is actually a considerably distorted form, the ancient Greek name Τρινακρία. Al-Ḥimyarī, who follows him in these data, retains for his part, implicit in a verse of Ibn Ras̲h̲īḳ (d. 463/1071 [ q.v.]), the false etymology, owed to…

, the Arabic orthography for tarì , a term used by Western sources together with Latin tarenus and Greek ταρίον, to indicate a gold coin called in Arabic rubʿ , rubāʿī , struck in Sicily by the Fāṭimids and the Kalbids, who acknowledged formally their authority. The name—deriving from the Arabic adjective ṭarī “fresh, new”—may have described the grade of preservation of the coins, that is “uncirculated rubāʿī”, ¶ with the noun dropped in the language of the native speakers. This explanation can be connected with the circulation of sealed purses containing tarì s wh…

, the mediaeval Arabic form of the name of the city of Syracuse in Sicily. Founded by men of Corinth in 734 B.C., it was the most powerful of the Greek colonies until the Roman conquest. Belisarius captured it for Byzantium, and in 663 Constans II fixed his seat there. In Byzantine times, it was frequently raided by Arabs from Ifrīḳiya. The name of the city also appears in Arabic sources as Sarakūsa, with vars. Sarḳūsa, Surḳūsa, etc. According to Amari, the Arabic transcription may be from an older form than the Greek Συράκουσαι used before Yāḳūt’s time. The most exact geographical descripti…