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, the name of a very old Persian fire-temple, a place or district to the south-east of Lake Urmiya in Ād̲h̲arbāyd̲j̲ān, 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, Čaēčasta; 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 Pahlavi texts. The older geographers correctly consider the two places and names to be distinct. The Arab traveller Abū Dulaf [ q.v.] visited S̲h̲īz en route for Daylam and then Ād̲h̲arbāyd…

the planet Mars. The etymology of the name is unknown. The sphere of Mars is the fifth sphere of the planets. It is bounded on the inner side by the sphere of the sun and on the outer side by the sphere of Jupiter, and its breadth is according to Ptolemy (xx, 376) 998 miles. Its period of revolution is estimated at 1 year, 10 months and 22 days. In about 17 years, after 9 revolutions, Mars comes back to the same spot in the heavens; it spends about 40 days in each sign of the zodiac and covers about 40 minutes each day. It is said to be one-and-ahalf times the size of the earth. Astrologers call Mars al-Naḥs al-a…

(Ar.; from Persian pīl ), elephant. The word appears in the title and first verse of Sūra CV, which alludes to the expedition of Abraha [ q.v.], but the Arabs were barely acquainted with this animal which is a native of India and Africa; consequently when, towards the end of the 2nd/beginning of the 8th century, a troop of elephants arrived in Baṣra, it was a matter of curiosity for the population (see al-Nawawī, Tahd̲h̲īb , 738). The subject had already come up in the Kalīla wa-Dimna (trans. A. Miquel, Paris 1957, 53), but the first Arab author truly to con…

, also nus̲h̲ādir , naws̲h̲ādir , Sanskrit navasadara , Chin, nao-s̲h̲a , sal-ammoniac. The etymology of the word is uncertain; perhaps it comes from the Pahlavi anōs̲h̲-ādar “immortal fire” as we find the form anūs̲h̲ād̲h̲ur in Syriac. The oldest references to the occurrence of salammoniac in a natural state are in the reports of ¶ Chinese embassies of the 6th-7th centuries, which were the subject of very full investigation in connection with a geological problem, the question of volcanoes in Central Asia, by H.J. von Klaprot…

, Bezoar, a remedy against all kinds of poisons, highly esteemed and paid for throughout the Middle Ages up to the 18th century, and in the Orient even up to this very day. The genuine (Oriental) Bezoar-stone is obtained from the bezoargoat ( Capra aegagrus Gm.) and, according to the investigations of Friedrich Wöhler, the famous chemist (1800-1882), and others, it is a gall-stone. The stone seems to have been unknown to ancient Arabs, for neither in the lexica nor in A. Siddiqi, Studien über die persischen Fremdwörter im klassischen Arabisch , 1919, is the word …

, ballūr —whether from the Greek βήρυλλος is a disputed point, cf. Dozy, Supplément , i, 110—rock-crystal. According to the Petrology of Aristotle the stone is a kind of glass but harder and more compact. It is the finest, purest and most translucent of natural glasses, and also occurs among the colours of the yāḳūt by the dust-coloured rock-crystal is meant the smoky topaz. It may also be artificially coloured; it concentrates the sun’s rays so that a black rag or piece of cotton or wool may be set on f ire by it; valuable ve…

(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 woof; according t…

—frequently regarded as a noun defined by the article ( al-mās ; correctly al-Almās according to Ibn al-At̲h̲īr, in LA, viii, 97: the ’l belongs to the root as in Ilyās ), a corrupt form from the Greek ἀδάμας (l.c.: " wa-laysat bi-ʿarabiyya "),—the diamond. According to the pseudo-Aristotelian …

, the pearl. The ancient legend of its origin is found at great length in the Arabic authors, first in the Petrology ( Steinbuch , ed. Ruska) of Aristotle, then with variants in the Rasāʾil Ik̲h̲wān al-Ṣafāʾ and the later cosmographers. According to it, the aṣṭūrūs (’οστρεῖον) rises from the depths of the sea frequented by ships and goes out to the ocean. The winds there set up a shower of spray and the shells open to receive drops from This; when it has collected a few drops it goes to a secluded spot and exposes the…

(a.), donkey (fem, atān and ḥimāra ). The Arabs make a distinction between the domestic donkey ( ahlī ) and the wild donkey ( waḥs̲h̲ī , faraʾ , ʿayr al-ʿāna ). Domestic donkeys are used to turn mills, as beasts of burden and as mounts, but although the Prophet is said to have owned one, named Yaʿfūr, and although the animal has been esteemed by famous persons, it is not ridden by Arabs of high rank, who even employ a formula of apology ( ḥas̲h̲ā-kum , aʿazza-kum Allāh , etc.) when they utter its name. The zoological works provide details of its characteristic…

Abū Bakr b. Badr , with the by-name al-Bayṭār al-Nāṣirī , was grand master and chief veterinary surgeon of the stables of the Mamlūk sultan of Egypt al-Nāṣir, Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ḳalāwūn (who ruled in 693/1294, from 698/1299 to 708/1309-10 and from 709/1310 to 741/1341). It was at This ruler’s request that Ibn al-Mund̲h̲ir wrote, in about 740/1339-40, his treatise on hippology entitled Kās̲h̲if hamm al-wayl fī maʿrifat amrāḍ al-k̲h̲ayl , a compilation from earlier sources and in particular from the …

, the turquoise, a well-known precious stone of a bright green or “mountain green” to sky-blue colour with a gloss like wax; in composition it is a hydrated clay phosphate with a small but essential proportion of copper and iron. The colour is not permanent in all stones, and is said to be particularly affected by perspiration. It is almost always cut as an ornament …

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(a,), ambergris ( ambre gris, ambra grisea, to distinguish it from ambre jaune = amber ), a substance of sweet musk-like smell, easily fusible and burning with a bright flame; highly valued in the East as a perfume and as a medicine. It is found floating on the water in tropical seas, (spec, gravity 0.78-0.93), or on the shore, sometimes in large lumps. Ambergris probably is a morbid secretion of the gall-bladder of the sperm-whale in whose intestines it is found. Ḳazwinī mentions it amon…

, also tilsim , tilism , tilasm , etc. fr…

, S̲h̲araf al-Dīh Abu ’l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Yūsuf al-Ḳaysī, Egyptian scholar and man-of-letters (580-651/1184-1253). Al-Tīfās̲h̲ī is the author of a few works on sexual hygiene, the most well-known and quite representative being the Kitāb Rud̲j̲ūʿ al-s̲h̲ayk̲h̲ ilā ṣibāh fi ’l-ḳūwa ʿalā ’l-bāh (tr. into English by an anonymous writer under the tide The old man young again, Paris 1898) which is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the physiology of the sexual organs and beneficial and noxious aspects of sexual intercourse, provides a large numb…

(a.) “snake”, generic name of the ophidians, embracing all kinds of reptiles ( mā yansāḥ ) from the most poisonous to the most harmless, the viper ( afʿā ) appearing to be the most clearly distinguished species among them. Terms such as ḥanas̲h̲ , aym , t̲h̲uʿbān , aswad , raḳs̲h̲āʾ , ṣill , etc. are given in classical Arabic to species which are not always easily identifiable from the descriptions in the early zoological works, there being a certain amount of confusion in this field; and present-day terminology is still far from being precise even in dialects and for the species which actually live in the Arabic-speaking countries (see e.g., V. Monteil, Faune du Sahara …

(a.), measurement, means of measuring, any simple measuring instrument; in Egypt the name of the Nilometer, i.e. the gauge in which the annual rise of the river can be measured. Originally the rising of the Nile was measured by the gauge ( al-raṣāṣa…