Many of the same issues encountered during my search for Arabic terms for birds and mammals – the need to collect both taxonomic terms and non- taxonomic terms, the difficulties posed by lexical and morphological diglossia, and the problem of lexical ambiguity – were also found when I began collecting Arabic terms for plants and insects. Yet other complications became evident when I examined the sources about plant terms.
1 Problems in Collecting Terms for Plants
1.1 Defective Transcription and Transliteration of Terms in the Sources
Several of my sources were lists of the terms for plants that are used in various parts of the Arab world. Compiling these lists required specialized knowledge in two very different fields: botany and Arabic linguistics. Although the ethnobotanists who collected lexical data had deep knowledge of botany, some were unable to provide correct transcriptions or transliterations of the Arabic terms. As a result, some of them provided what appeared to be very careful botanical identifications of plant species but failed to transcribe the Arabic terms for these species with sufficient precision. This meant that, in some cases, it was difficult to know whether the terms were from the classical Arabic lexicon or were only local, colloquial reflexes of classical items that differed from standard Arabic mainly with respect to pronunciation and morphology. In other cases, it was not even clear that the terms were of Arabic origin at all; some seemed to be loanwords from other languages, at least at first glance, because they were transcribed or transliterated so poorly.
Of course, I needed exact transcriptions and transliterations of the Arabic terms for comparing them with the names for Bedouin kinship groups. Thus, I needed to recover the standard Arabic forms of the colloquial Arabic reflexes given in my sources.
To illustrate how I did this, I will examine an ethnobotanical study of terms for medicinal plants among the Kabābīš Bedouin of northern Sudan that was published by a group of Sudanese ethnobotanists (Madani et al. 2014). The terms given in this study and the botanical classifications of the plants to which the terms refer appear in Table 5.1:
Medicinal plant terms in use among the Kabābīš of Northern Sudan
After Madani et al. 201 4: 94–95
This list included some lexemes that I did not recognize (ex. “higlig,” “harjal,” “haza”). I thought that they might be loanwords from some of the non-Semitic languages of Sudan. I could not be sure of this, however, without comparing the transcriptions in this study with Arabic-language works on botany that could give me the standard Arabic terms for the same species in Arabic script.
To correct the inexact transcriptions in this list, I searched for the botanical classifications of the plants in two Arabic-language works on botany (ex. Bedevian 2006; El-Bably 1949). These Arabic-language works, unfortunately, did not provide the short vowels for the Arabic botanical terms, so to fill this gap I consulted an Arabic-English dictionary (Hava 1970) and an Arabic-Arabic dictionary (al-Ǧurr 1973). I also decided to try to recover the colloquial equivalents by searching for them in the standard dictionary for colloquial Sudanese Arabic (Qāsim 1972), to make sure that I had connected the correct colloquial terms with the species identified. The results are given in Table 5.2.
Comparison of Kabābīš plant terms with corresponding terms in Classical Arabic
As it turned out, my comparison of many sources only enabled me to identify one loanword, “tobako,” which is clearly from English, derived from “tobacco.” The comparison also identified one colloquial Sudanese Arabic term, maḥarēb, that does not appear to be a reflex of a classical Arabic word. I did not include these two terms in my plant lexicon.
I had great difficulty with item number 25, “harjal.” One Arabic-language source lists ḥarǧal as a variant form of ḥarmal and classifies both as Peganum harmala L. (Ǧabbūr 1988: 424). This is not the classification given by Madani et al. (see Table 5.1). Hava defines ḥarǧal as “a large, wingless locust” but lists the morphologically similar word, ḥarmal, which he says is a kind of plant, that is, a variety of rue (Hava 1970: 118, 120). Al-Ǧurr lists no noun under ḥarǧal but does list ḥarmal, for which he gives two botanical definitions in Arabic (without the Linnaean classifications) (al-Ǧurr 1973: 442). Said et al. have no entry for ḥarǧal but list ḥarmal and classify it as ZYGOPHYLLACEAE, Peganum harmala (Said et al. 2002: 260). A comparison of these sources initially led me to conclude that “ḥarjal” is a mistake and that the correct form is ḥarmal, which would be the term for ZYGOPHYLLACEAE, Peganum harmala.
However, this conclusion is undermined by other sources. Al Khulaidi and Thompson (2012: 43) and Mandaville (2011) list ḥarmal but classify it as APOCYNACEAE, Rhazya stricta Decne. Furthermore, Qāsim lists both ḥarǧal and ḥarmal. He says that ḥarǧal is a plant whose inner bark is boiled to yield a medicinal drink, much as Madani et al. say (Madani et al. 2014: 95). Qāsim believes that ḥarǧal is a Nubian loanword, not an Arabic word. As for ḥarmal, Qāsim says that it is an Arabic word for a plant whose seeds are like sesame seeds (Qāsim 1972: 156, 159).
Other botanical reference works led me to think that ḥarǧal is the correct Arabic term for ZYGOPHYLLACEAE, Peganum harmala. El-Bably lists ḥarǧal and classifies it as ZYGOPHYLLACEAE, Peganum harmala (El-Bably 1949: 30). Bailey and Danin also list ḥarǧal and also classify it as Peganum harmala L. (Bailey and Danin 1981: 160).
However, I found two other sources – Bedevian (Bedevian 2006: 557) and Saleem (Saleem 2012: 31) – that list ḥarǧal and that also give it the same classification that was given by Madani et al. – that is, Solenostemma argel (Delile). Yet both Bedevian and Saleem place ḥarǧal in a different order: ASCLEPIADACEAE. El-Bably lists ḥarmal and classifies it as APOCYNACEAE, Solenostemma argel (El-Bably 1949: 30), exactly as Madani et al. classify harǧal.
There seems to be no way to resolve these contradictions. For the purposes of this book, I will list ḥarǧal as the term for ASCLEPIADACEAE, Solenostemma argel (Delile) and will list ḥarmal as the term for ZYGOPHYLLACEAE, Peganum harmala.
I also noticed that item number 11 in Table 5.2 has completely different forms in colloquial Sudanese and classical Arabic. The colloquial term ḍirēsah and the classical term ḥasakah both refer to the same plant species – Tribulus terestris L. – but the colloquial term is a reflex of an entirely different classical Arabic word and is not derived from ḥasakah. This alerted me to the possibility that more than one Arabic plant term may be used to identify a single plant species.
1.2 Arabic Synonyms and Plant Terminology
My next step was to search my sources to see whether synonyms for any other terms existed in the Arabic lexicon. For instance, the Sudanese term for the Balanites aegyptiaca (L.) tree is hiǧlīǧ, which seems to be the reflex of classical Arabic halīǧ. However, according to my other sources, there is also another classical Arabic term for this tree: zaqqūm (El-Bably 1949: 7; Hava 1970: 292). To take yet another example, the plant which is listed as “rabla” or “rabalah” in Table 5.2 – that is, Pulicaria undulata (L.), a kind of flea bane – is called ǧiṯǧāṯah elsewhere (Bedevian 2006: 493; El-Bably 1949: 33; Hava 1970: 239; al-Ǧurr 1973: 379).
In fact, many plants have more than one name in Arabic; synonyms appear to be rather common. A rough idea of the frequency of synonyms can be obtained by sampling the comprehensive botanical list in Bedevian (2006). Judging from a sample of the first 500 entries (of a total of 3,657), some 111 – or about 22% of them – have two or more names in Arabic (Bedevian 2006: 1–84).
My impression is that synonymy in plant terminology is much more common than synonymy in the Arabic terms for mammals and birds. True, I did find some synonyms for birds. There are three separate terms in Iraq for the wood pigeon (Columba palumbus L.); Iraqis call it either ṭabbān, dalam, or waršān (Allouse 1953: 40, 53, 69). I also found synonyms for some mammalian species. There are three terms for “beaver” (CASTORIDAE, Castor fiber) in the Arabic lexicon, for example: bādastar, ḥārūd, and qundus (Hava 1970: 629; al-Ǧurr 1973: 209, 210, 421, 970; Wehr 1976: 736). However, the first term is a loanword from Persian which designates the Old-World variety of the animal, the castor (Haim 1992: 112), while ḥārūd is a rare word that is omitted from most standard Arabic dictionaries. Neither al-Bustānī, Hava, nor Wehr list it (see al-Bustānī 1983: 141, 159; Hava 1970: 118; Wehr 1976: 151, 167). In general, synonymous terms for mammals are not very common in Arabic.
For my purposes, it was necessary to decide whether to include all of the synonyms for a particular plant species in my data set. In some cases, it seemed reasonable to choose only one synonym and cull the others, especially when the synonyms for a particular species are phonologically and morphologically similar to each other. But in other cases, the synonyms are very different from each other in sound and form. The terms given for “maple tree” (ACERACEAE, Acer campestre L.), for instance, are qayqab, dubb, asfandān, and šaǧarat al-ʿarab (Bedevian 2006: 10). Presumably, some synonyms are purely local terms that are used only in a single region, while others are common to most Arabic speakers. In the case of “maple tree,” one English-Arabic dictionary recognizes only one of the synonyms given by Bedevian: qayqab (Baʿalbakī 1972: 558). However, another dictionary lists both isfandān and qayqab (Wehr 1976: 17, 806). Accordingly, I have kept these two terms in my data set but have discarded dubb and šaǧarat al-ʿarab.
One criterion for deciding whether to include a synonym is morphological. As I explained in Chapter 3, I have deliberately chosen to focus on what ethnobiologists call the “primary lexeme,” that is, a single lexeme that denotes a natural species without adding adjectival or nominal modifiers and without making use of compound nouns or noun phrases. For example, the English term “eagle” (Linnaean name: Aquila; Arabic: ʿuqāb) is a “primary lexeme” while “Golden Eagle” (Linnaean name: Aquila chrysaetos; Arabic: ʿuqāb ḏahabī; see Allouse 1960–62, vol. 1: 197, 199) is not. I have applied this criterion to the synonyms for plant species. Doing so enables me to exclude a good many of them from my data set because they are noun phrases, not simple nouns. Hence, I will not include the terms šaǧarat al-dam, šaǧarat al-ʿarab, riǧl al-ḥamām, ḫuss al-ḥimār, and sāq al-ḥamām in my data set.
1.3 Inconsistent Botanical Classifications
Another problem that I encountered was disagreement among my sources about the correct botanical classification of a given species. For instance, the plants designated by the Arabic terms ḥamāṭ and ruġl are classified differently by various sources. The standard dictionaries gloss ḥamāṭ as “wild fig tree” (Hava 1970: 143) or “mountain fig” (al-Ǧurr 1973: 463). According to Ǧabbūr (1988: 425), the botanical classification of this species is: BORAGINACEAE, Lithospermum callosum Vahl. Mandaville (2011), however, classifies it as BORAGINACEAE, Moltkiopsis ciliata (Forssk.) I. M. Johnston, while El-Bably (1949: 19) places it in an entirely different order: MORACEAE, Ficus palmate. The same kind of disagreement about the place of the ruġl – or “garden orache” (Hava 1970: 260) – appears in these sources. Ǧabbūr (1988: 425) and Mandaville (2011) call it CHENOPODIACEAE, Atriplex leucoclada Boiss., while El-Bably (1949: 37) classifies it as LABIATAE, Stachys Aegyptiaca. It could well be that these disagreements stem from the progress made in botanical taxonomy over the past sixty years. Perhaps El-Bably’s work, published in 1949, is now out of date. At any rate, deciding which classification is correct is far beyond my expertise. I can only note such inconsistent classifications in my data set and leave it to others to select the correct ones.
These discoveries made it clear that I would have to check all of my English-language sources against several Arabic dictionaries to detect incorrect transliterations and transcriptions. My other English-language sources include Al Khulaidi et al. 2012; Bailey and Danin 1981; Hinnawi 2010; Mandaville 2011; Said et al. 2002; and Varisco 1991. It also became obvious that I would have to compare all of my sources – including Arabic-language reference works – with each other to identify inconsistencies. My data set about plant terminology is the result of these processes.
2 Terms for Insects and Spiders, Reptiles and Amphibians, and Marine Life
When I collected terms for insects, reptiles, amphibians, and marine life, I found in difficult to sustain the distinction between taxonomic and non-taxonomic terms that had been so useful previously. Arabic terms for insects, reptiles, amphibians, and the various forms of marine life rarely distinguish males from females. Some special terms exist for creatures at various stages of life, but these do not contrast systematically with terms for species. With regard to insects, for example, Arabic terms often refer to developmental stages in an insect’s life rather than to particular species. To illustrate: the terms ḫunfusāʾ (“beetle”), ḏabābah (“fly”), zanbūr (“wasp”), sūsah (“moth worm; weevil”), dūdah (“worm”), and ǧarād (“locust”) actually describe phases in an insect’s life cycle and can apply to the many very different species that all pass through these phases (al-Mallāḥ 2010: 5–9).
In light of this, it seemed futile to me to try to separate taxonomic terms for insect species from non-taxonomic terms for the different life stages of insects. Rather than compile separate lists of taxonomic and non-taxonomic terms, therefore, I made one comprehensive list of terms for each of the following broad categories of life forms: insects and spiders, reptiles and amphibians, and marine species (the latter including fish, sharks, and cuttlefish).
2.1 Insects and Spiders
With regard to the Arabic terms for insects, I discovered a huge number of terms that are used primarily by biologists and that are not known by the general public. As al-Mallāḥ notes, many of these scientific terms are literal translations from the Latin taxonomic terms. For example, one scientific term for a kind of termite – ISOPTERA, TERMITIDAE, Termes destructor – is arḍah muḫarribah, “destructive termite” (al-Mallāḥ 2010: 7, 16). The second part of this name is a loan translation, not an element in the indigenous Arabic lexicon. Thus, this second element has not been included in a list of indigenous Arabic terms for insects.
When matching the terms for insects with names of kinship groups, I encountered the same problem that I met with when examining terms for birds: ambiguous readings. As I explained in Chapter 3, I decided not to include several kinship group names (al-Ḥasāsinah, Yaʿqūb, Nahār, ʿAwf) because these names can be read in several different ways. In the case of insect terms, one comparable case is the term māzin. Although this can be read as “ant’s eggs” (see Hava 1970: 719), it is also the active participle for the verb mazana/yamzunu, “to fill (a water skin),” “to praise (a person),” or “to go away quickly and depart” (al-Bustānī 1983: 849). It seemed to me that the morphology of the word favors a reading of it as an active participle and that the reading “ant’s eggs” is secondary. For this reason, I have not included the 14 instances of Māzin that al-Wāʾilī (2002: 1923–24) lists in my data base of kinship group names.
2.2 Marine Life
Collecting terms for marine life was relatively straightforward. In some cases, however, terms for different species were distinguished only by their short vowels, so special care was needed to spell them correctly. For instance, the term for “coral,” marǧān, is almost identical to the term for a kind of fish known as the “red porgy” (SPARIDAE, Pagrus pagrus); the Arabic term for the latter is mirǧān (Maʿlūf 1932: 39, 167, 181; Merrian-Webster 1997: 907). Lexical diglossia further complicates the task of translating marǧān correctly. As it turns out, in Egypt this word is both the term for “coral” and the name of a kind of fresh water fish (Barilius nilotica) that lives in the Nile (Hinds and Badawi 1986: 815). A similar case of dialect variation, in which a single term is used in different geographical areas to refer to two different species, is the word qamr. This literally means “moon” (Hava 1970: 627) but in Egypt it refers to a silvery-colored kind of dogfish (Carenx luna) that is found in the Nile. In other parts of the Arab world, this term refers to a different species of fish: Citharus latus (Maʿlūf 1932: 51, 65).
Another issue arose when I encountered Arabic expressions such as qunfuḏ al-baḥr and šaqīq al-baḥr. The first expression literally means “hedgehog of the sea” but refers to the sea urchin; the second literally means “full-brother of the sea” but designates the sea anemone (Baʿalbakī 1972: 824–26; Hava 1970: 371, 631; al-Ǧurr 1973: 972). These expressions are not what I have called “primary lexemes.” I encountered similar expressions while collecting terms for birds. As before, I have excluded these compound expressions from my data base.
I have dealt with these problems in much the same way as I did previously, when collecting terms for birds and mammals.