118-635: The Zamzam Well ( Arabic : بئر زمزم , romanized : Biʾru Zamzam Arabic pronunciation: [biʔru zam.zam] ) is a well located within the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca , Saudi Arabia. It is located 20 m (66 ft) east of the Kaaba , the holiest place in Islam . According to Islamic narratives, the well is a miraculously generated source of water, which opened up thousands of years ago when
236-698: A BBC London investigation alleged that water taken from taps connected to the Zamzam Well contained high levels of nitrate and arsenic at levels three times the legal limit in the UK, the same levels found in illegal water purchased in the UK. The Saudi authorities rejected the BBC's claim and said that the water is fit for human consumption. An official from the Saudi Arabian embassy in London stated 'water from
354-530: A backpack by employees of the complexes with disposable plastic cups provided in any case. Small filtered water bottles are also distributed free of charge at the holy sites. The water distributed this way in the Masjid al-Haram totals ca. 700,000 litres (175,000 gal.) per day outside of pilgrimage season and 2,000,000 litres (500,000 gal.) per day during said season. Distribution outside the Islamic holy sites within
472-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
590-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
708-407: A database of words and their translations. Later attempts utilized common phrases , which resulted in better grammatical structure and the capture of idioms, but with many words left in the original language. For translating synthetic languages , a morphosyntactic analyzer and synthesizer are required. The best systems today use a combination of the above technologies and apply algorithms to correct
826-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
944-473: A great deal of difference between a literal translation of a poetic work and a prose translation. A literal translation of poetry may be in prose rather than verse but also be error-free. Charles Singleton's 1975 translation of the Divine Comedy is regarded as a prose translation. The term literal translation implies that it is probably full of errors, since the translator has made no effort to (or
1062-601: A hereditary position of the Abbasids , i.e. the progeny of al-ʿAbbās, who ended up seizing control over Mecca as a whole using their caliphate . Buildings called the Arabic : بيت الشراب , romanized : Baytu 'š-Šarrāb , lit. 'House of Drinking', variously referred to also as the Arabic : قبات الشراب , romanized : Qubbātu 'š-Šarāb , lit. 'Domes of Drinking', were structures used to store jars of Zamzam water away from
1180-559: A layer of meaning associated with the sacred and mystical, in addition to the basic notion of the sound possibly being related to the concept of an abundant flow of water. Early Islamic sources use the terms Arabic : زمزم , romanized : zamzama and Arabic : زمازم , romanized : zamāzima to refer to the religious rites of Zoroastrianism and the Zoroastrians. The terms are onomatopoeic and derive from what Arabs perceived to be an indistinct, droning sound of
1298-487: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
SECTION 10
#17327646929451416-456: A literal translation in preparing his translation of Dante 's Inferno (1994), as he does not know Italian. Similarly, Richard Pevear worked from literal translations provided by his wife, Larissa Volokhonsky, in their translations of several Russian novels. Literal translation can also denote a translation that represents the precise meaning of the original text but does not attempt to convey its style, beauty, or poetry. There is, however,
1534-439: A manner which cannot be mediated via quarantine. British scientists would continue publishing anti-Zamzam and anti-contagionist articles up to 1895. Their anti-contagionist views would fall further and further away from scientific consensus in the following decades. Concurrently Ottoman authorities continued to invest into persistent and successful efforts seeking to maintain and improve water quality throughout Arabia. In May 2011,
1652-690: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
1770-539: A new building over Zamzam. Following their conquest of Mecca in 1803, during the reign of Selim III , the Wahhabis , led by Abdulaziz bin Muhammad Al Saud , destroyed the dome covering the well. In 1964 the last building covering the well of Zamzam, which had been rebuilt by Ottoman authorities following the destruction of the building housing Zamzam by the first Saudi State , was demolished by authorities of
1888-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
2006-548: A sa voiture et sa voiture, ses serviettes et ses serviettes, sa bibliothèque et les siennes. " That does not make sense because it does not distinguish between "his" car and "hers". Often, first-generation immigrants create something of a literal translation in how they speak their parents' native language. This results in a mix of the two languages that is something of a pidgin . Many such mixes have specific names, e.g., Spanglish or Denglisch . For example, American children of German immigrants are heard using "rockingstool" from
2124-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
2242-404: A serious problem for machine translation . The term "literal translation" often appeared in the titles of 19th-century English translations of the classical Bible and other texts. Word-for-word translations ("cribs", "ponies", or "trots") are sometimes prepared for writers who are translating a work written in a language they do not know. For example, Robert Pinsky is reported to have used
2360-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
2478-468: A tradition of deriving the name from an exclamation supposedly made by Hajar either being Arabic : زم، زم! , romanized : zamm, zamm! , lit. 'fill, fill!' or supposedly Egyptian meaning "Stop, stop!". Islamic tradition states that the Zamzam Well was opened up in some form by God to assist Hajar , the second wife of Ibrahim and mother of Ismaʿil . In Islamic narratives Ibrahim, commanded by God, led Hajar and Ismaʿil to
SECTION 20
#17327646929452596-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
2714-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
2832-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
2950-737: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
3068-456: Is a translation of a text done by translating each word separately without looking at how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence. In translation theory , another term for literal translation is metaphrase (as opposed to paraphrase for an analogous translation). It is to be distinguished from an interpretation (done, for example, by an interpreter ). Literal translation leads to mistranslation of idioms , which can be
3186-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
3304-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
3422-620: Is an onomatopoeia . She associates the noun with the adjectives Arabic : زمزم , romanized : zamzam and Arabic : زمازم , romanized : zumāzim which are onomatopoeic denoting a dull sound stemming from either a distant roll (of thunder) or a guttural sound emitted with a closed mouth by animals or people, however meaning either 'an abundant supply of water' or 'a source of water which does not dry up' if applied to Arabic : ماء , romanized : māʾ , lit. 'water'. She states that this latter meaning of an unintelligible guttural sound encompasses
3540-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
3658-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
Zamzam Well - Misplaced Pages Continue
3776-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
3894-503: Is meant to dig for, the fourth then names Zamzam. Other accounts omit the third dream naming Arabic : المضنونة , romanized : al-Maḍnūna . Following ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib's precognitions to dig, he is claimed to have found a number of artefacts: golden gazelle figurines, armour, and several specimens of a type of sword called Arabic : السيف القلعى , romanized : as-Sayf al-Qalaʿī , lit. 'Qalaʿī sword'. Ibn Saʿd relays two separate traditions regarding
4012-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
4130-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
4248-432: Is responsible for the rediscovery of the well. He purportedly had a divine precognition about the well at some point in his life. A common narrative relayed by Ibn Ishaq via Ibn Hisham involves four dreams, the first three concern mysterious objects called Arabic : طيبة , romanized : Ṭayba , Arabic : برة , romanized : Barra and Arabic : المضنونة , romanized : al-Maḍnūna he
4366-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
4484-590: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
4602-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
4720-632: Is unable to) convey correct idioms or shades of meaning, for example, but it can also be a useful way of seeing how words are used to convey meaning in the source language. A literal English translation of the German phrase " Ich habe Hunger " would be "I have hunger" in English, but this is clearly not a phrase that would generally be used in English, even though its meaning might be clear. Literal translations in which individual components within words or compounds are translated to create new lexical items in
4838-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
Zamzam Well - Misplaced Pages Continue
4956-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
5074-584: The Grand Sharif was required. During the reign of Awn ar-Rafiq as Grand Sharif for example such a license cost £50. In the 15th century the Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay invested into improving the well's water quality, as well as funding the construction of a new dome covering the well. In 1489, during the reign of Mamluk Sultan Malik an-Nāṣir, reconstruction of the Dome of Abbas, i.e. one of
5192-591: The Ottoman War College , for further scientific inquiry. Their testing revealed nothing dangerous about the water of Zamzam. By comparing their results to the results Frankland had published they began to publicly doubt the authenticity of his sample, as his sample was almost as saline as sea water. Additionally they explained that the water in Mecca's aqueducts and that from Zamzam came from entirely different sources, that pilgrims did not so much as bathe near
5310-568: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
5428-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
5546-475: The third Saudi State (known at that time already as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ). In its place the opening of the well was moved to a basement, 2.5 metres (8') deep, to free up space above ground for pilgrims. The well of Zamzam was expanded by hand over the years, and is about 30 m (100 ft) deep and 1.08 to 2.66 m (3 ft 7 in to 8 ft 9 in) in diameter. It taps groundwater from
5664-412: The wadi alluvium and some from the bedrock . Historically water from the well was drawn via ropes and buckets, but since 1964 the well's opening itself is in a basement room inaccessible to the public, where it can be seen behind glass panels. Two electric pumps, operating alternately, move the water 5 km (3 miles) southwards at a pace of between 11 and 18.5 litres (2½ and 4½ gallons) per second to
5782-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
5900-535: The "natural" sound of the translation. In the end, though, professional translation firms that employ machine translation use it as a tool to create a rough translation that is then tweaked by a human, professional translator. Douglas Hofstadter gave an example of a failure of machine translation: the English sentence "In their house, everything comes in pairs. There's his car and her car, his towels and her towels, and his library and hers." might be translated into French as " Dans leur maison, tout vient en paires. Il y
6018-786: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Literal translation Literal translation , direct translation , or word-for-word translation
SECTION 50
#17327646929456136-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
6254-571: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
6372-779: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
6490-435: The German word Schaukelstuhl instead of "rocking chair". Literal translation of idioms is a source of translators' jokes. One such joke, often told about machine translation , translates "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" (an allusion to Mark 14:38 ) into Russian and then back into English, getting "The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten". This is not an actual machine-translation error, but rather
6608-556: The Jurhum being forced to leave Mecca because of God expelling them for their misdeeds their leader buries sacred objects from the Kaʿba in the location of Zamzam. In others, focused on the well itself, the objects are placed in Zamzam itself, with the well ultimately being buried by the leader of the Jurhum. According to traditional Muslim accounts, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib , grandfather of Muhammad ,
6726-640: The Kaʿba reputed to have been used as the treasury of the Kaʿba and as a place for religious offerings in pre-Islamic Mecca and Zamzam merged at some point with stories concerning the former being adapted to feature the latter. Commentators of the Abbasid-era mystic discourses surrounding the well, like al-Masʿūdī expanded on these extra-Quranic accounts. They further connect the site to Zoroastrianism via what they interpret to be Zoroastrian religious artefacts uncovered by ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib in combination with their etymological analyses. Ultimately arguing that due to
6844-803: The King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Zamzam Water Project in Kudai. The center opened in September 2010 costing 700 million Saudi Riyal to construct and being operated by the National Water Company of Saudi Arabia. In this location treatment using filters and ultraviolet light, storage, and distribution take place. Once treated the water is stored in one of two reservoirs, the first at the plant's location in Kudai can hold 10,000 cubic meters (13,000 cu. yd.) of water,
6962-479: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia occurs with the water being bottled in 10-litre (2½ gallon) containers which are sold directly at a warehouse at the site of the King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Zamzam Water Project or via hypermarkets and super stores throughout the state. In 2018 the number of 10-litre (2½ gallon) containers distributed per day was 1.5 million. In 2010 the annual limit on how much water can be extracted from
7080-611: The Magnificent funded many construction and renovation works in the city. One of these began in 1540 with the destruction of the roof covering the well, which had remained intact since Qaitbay's rule. While construction was disrupted by a flood, completion of the new roof occurred in January 1542. In 1621 the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I had an iron cage constructed around the well. In 1660 Ottoman authorities constructed
7198-611: The Masjid al-Haram, and that Zamzam could not be a cholera source because Mecca did not see annual cholera epidemics during the Hajj. Related to their doubts of the water's authenticity they began to speculate that Yusuf Kudzi, a British protected person and associate of Zohrab, had been the source of the water and had contaminated the water to embarrass the Muslim world. Kudzi was of Russian-Jewish ancestry, he had been born in Jerusalem and
SECTION 60
#17327646929457316-469: The Medina location. Unbottled water is available through the before-mentioned drinking fountains, a fountain meant for pilgrims wishing to fill larger containers not intended for immediate consumption, and sterilised containers placed by authorities throughout the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. These latter containers come in several variants, chilled and unchilled, as well as being either stationary or worn as
7434-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
7552-690: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
7670-576: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
7788-625: The SGS, the Zamzam Well is tested on a daily basis, in a process which involves the taking of three samples from the well. These samples are then examined at the King Abdullah Zamzam Water Distribution Center in Mecca, which is equipped with advanced facilities. The Zamzam well was recently renovated in 2018 by the Saudi authorities. The project involved cleaning of the areas around the Zamzam well by removing
7906-615: The Two Holy Mosques' Affairs, according to Fahd Turkistani, advisor to the General Authority of Meteorology and Environmental Protection . Turkistani stated that the Zamzam water pollution may have been caused by unsterilized containers used by illegal workers selling Zamzam water at Makkah gates. In the same month that the BBC report was released, the Council of British Hajjis later declared that drinking Zamzam water
8024-497: The Wadi Ibrahim, as well as run-off from the local hills. Since the area has become more and more settled, water from absorbed rainfall on the Wadi Ibrahim has decreased. The Saudi Geological Survey has a "Zamzam Studies and Research Centre" which analyses the technical properties of the well in detail. Water levels were monitored by hydrograph , which in more recent times has changed to a digital monitoring system that tracks
8142-546: The Zamzam well is not contaminated and is fit for human consumption. Genuine Zamzam water does not contain arsenic'. The president of the Saudi Geological Survey (SGS), Zuhair Nawab, has stated that the Zamzam Well is tested on a daily basis, in a process involving the taking of three samples from the well. The BBC article concentrated on bottled water supplied by individuals rather than the Presidency of
8260-459: The Zamzami for the pilgrim. Payment was in practice also expected for the further services of the Zamzami. These included bringing the pilgrim water throughout his pilgrimage and pouring it over his body for purposes of ritual cleaning ( wuḍūʾ ) among others. To nudge the pilgrim into donating adequately the Zamzami would show the pilgrim the bad state of the prayer mats he laid out in the Masjid for
8378-497: The aftermath of their attack on the city, the Well Zamzam, as well as all other wells in the city were filled with corpses of pilgrims. Following the Abbasid relinquishment of the management of the well a quasi-guild called Zamzamis emerged and remained in place at least until the end of the 19th century. While theoretically anyone could go to the well and fill a vessel they brought at the well, in practice this group of specialised men ended up being primarily responsible for distributing
8496-414: The area around Zamzam with marble . Beginning in the years 833-855, during the rule of al-Muʿtasim , a civil servant called ʿUmar ibn Faraǧ ar-Ruḫḫaǧī began a series of construction projects related to the well, all marked by their intricate use of mosaics . He ended up constructing a dome covering the well and demolishing a previous structure surrounding it. Additionally a dome connecting the new dome over
8614-453: The area of present-day Mecca, there he left them alone in the desert. The two are narrated to have been suffering severely from thirst. In some versions of the story Hajar walks back and forth between the two hills of Safa and Marwah in search of water. The story of the appearance of the well either involves the infant Isma'il scraping the ground with his feet and water springing out or God sending Gabriel ( Jibra'il ) who consequently opens up
8732-586: The city. They would conquer the Black Stone and move it to the capital of their own state in Bahrayn for 22 years. They were briefly led in 931 by a Persian, al-Isfahani , whom they believed to be God incarnate who unsuccessfully attempted to convert the Qarmatian state to Zoroastrianism. They destroyed the dome covering Zamzam. It is relayed by historians such as Qutb ad-Dīn [ de ] that in
8850-634: The closure of Zamzam as a public health measure to protect the people of Asia and Europe. Frankland's report became the basis for a treatise presented to the Ottoman Board of Health by the Dutch emissary thereto. The treaty was received very negatively and interpreted to be anti-Islamic propaganda. Mehmed Şakir Bey, an epidemiologist , was so outraged that he consulted Bonkowski Paşa , the Sultan's head chemist, and Ahmet Efendi , professor of chemistry at
8968-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
9086-530: The debris of concrete and steel used in the old cellar of the Grand Mosque . During Ramadan , 100 samples are tested every day to ensure the water's good quality. Cholera epidemics and the Hajj had become an issue of debate since an 1866 International Sanitary Conference in Istanbul . The conference however identified British steam-ships transporting Indian Muslims to the Hajj as mainly responsible for
9204-522: The discovery of a well by ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, one involving Zamzam's discovery and water disputes among the Quraysh , the other involving the series of dreams and said artefacts but neither water nor the name Zamzam. Hawting's analysis argues that the oral traditions surrounding the Arabic : بئر الكعبة , romanized : Biʾru 'l-Kaʿba , lit. 'Well of the Kaʿba';, a dry well inside
9322-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
9440-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
9558-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
9676-458: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
9794-731: The globalisation of cholera . The Ottoman state consequently instituted a quarantine system using the Red Sea to protect public health. Britain tried to undermine this system in the coming decades fearing public backlash in India and restrictions on its ability to engage in free trade . The first controversy surrounding the safety of water from the Zamzam Well began in 1883. In 1881, James Zohrab, British Consul in Jeddah sent samples of water, which he alleged to be Zamzam water, to Edward Frankland , who published his findings in 1883. Frankland claimed
9912-470: The heat. One of which is claimed to have been initially built on orders from and named after Abbas , founder of the Abbasid dynasty himself. However, al-Azraqī describes the well being fully in the open during the age of ʿAbdallāh , son of ʿAbbās. He reports it being surrounded by two pools: one pool between the well and a corner of the Kaʿba, used for quenching the thirst of pilgrims; and another pool behind
10030-597: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
10148-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
10266-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
10384-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
10502-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
10620-782: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
10738-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
10856-684: The other, the King Abdulaziz Sabeel Reservoir in Medina , has a larger capacity of 16,000 cubic meters (20,000 cu. yd.). The Kudai location is connected via pipes to drinking fountains in the Masjid al-Haram. The Medina location supplies the Prophet's Mosque . Aside from the system of pipes unbottled water is distributed using tanker trucks which transport 150,000 litres (35,000 gal.) per day at normal times and up to 400,000 litres per day (100,000 gal.) during pilgrimage seasons to
10974-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
11092-406: The pilgrims and explain his dire need for donations. The more generous the pilgrim's donations were, the more expansive the Zamzami's services became; with services such as procuring bottled Zamzam water to be taken home after the pilgrimage and bringing jugs right to the pilgrim's abode in Mecca being reserved for the most generous. To be allowed into the trade of being a Zamzami a costly license from
11210-444: The recitation of Avestan prayers and scriptures by Magi . Mediaeval Arabic writers like al-Masʿūdī generally state the well is named on the account of Arabic : زمزم , romanized : zamzama , lit. 'prayers recited by Zoroastrians'. They argue that based on their "kinship with Abraham " Zoroastrians regularly made pilgrimages to Mecca to pray over the well. A later account by al-ʿAynī claims that
11328-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
11446-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
11564-511: The site of the well. A building supposedly first constructed by Adam , which Muslim tradition regards as the origin of the Kaʿba . The well is meant to have dried up (possibly as punishment) during the settlement of the tribe of the Jurhum , who initially are meant to have migrated to the area from Yemen. In some narrations focused on the objects deposited in Zamzam the well simply dries up, then prior to
11682-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
11800-434: The son of Ibrahim ( Abraham ), Ismaʿil ( Ishmael ), was left with his mother Hajar ( Hagar ) in the desert. It is stated to have dried up during the settlement of the Jurhum in the area and to have been rediscovered in the 6th century by Abd al-Muttalib , grandfather of Muhammad . The origin of the name is uncertain. According to historian Jacqueline Chabbi , the noun Arabic : زمزم , romanized : Zamzam
11918-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
12036-534: The target language (a process also known as "loan translation") are called calques , e.g., beer garden from German Biergarten . The literal translation of the Italian sentence, " So che questo non va bene " ("I know that this is not good"), produces "(I) know that this not (it) goes well", which has English words and Italian grammar . Early machine translations (as of 1962 at least) were notorious for this type of translation, as they simply employed
12154-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
12272-553: The two Domes of Drinking, occurred. There had been structures bearing this name and function again at least since 1183. The new structure featured a large painted gate made from yellow stone, a large fountain in its middle, three iron windows, and two metal fountains for pilgrims to drink from all housed under a large dome. Following the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate and their assumption of power in Mecca, Suleiman
12390-402: The valley, lined with stone masonry except for the top metre (3 ft) which has a concrete "collar". The lower half is in the bedrock. Between the alluvium and the bedrock is a 1 ⁄ 2 -metre (1 ft 8 in) section of permeable weathered rock, lined with stone, and it is this section that provides the main water entry into the well. Water in the well comes from absorbed rainfall in
12508-525: The water from the well to be six times more contaminated by animal waste than sewage in London . Arguing that due to human waste being simply buried in the ground in Mecca, the groundwater had become highly contaminated and a source of cholera. This situation, coupled with the city's visitors from all around the Muslim world , is meant to have spread the disease effectively throughout it. He ultimately called for
12626-479: The water level, electric conductivity, pH , Eh , and temperature. All of this information is made continuously available via the Internet. Other wells throughout the valley have also been established, some with digital recorders, to monitor the response of the local aquifer system. Zamzam water is colourless and odorless, but has a distinctive taste, with a pH of 7.9–8, and so is slightly alkaline. According to
12744-634: The well and the House of Drinking was constructed. Ar-Ruḫḫaǧī had the House of Drinking demolished in 843–844, during the rule of al-Wathiq , and went on to have three small domes surrounding the dome covering Zamzam built in its stead. In the year 930 a minority branch of Ismaʿilism called the Qarmatians launched an attack on Mecca . They had previously attacked many caravans of the Abbasid Caliphate, including those of pilgrims travelling to
12862-587: The well is named after Arabic : زمازم , romanized : zamāzima supposedly meaning "bridles" which had been donated to the well by and named after Sasan , the Zoroastrian progenitor of the Sasanian Empire . Other medieval Arabic sources connect the name to the Angel Gabriel being the source of the murmuring being captured by this onomatopoeia. Hughes additionally identifies
12980-416: The well used for wuḍūʾ , i.e. religious ritual cleaning, with a subterranean drainage channel leading the waste water out of the Masjid al-Haram's courtyard. He describes the well's operators pouring the water drawn alternately between the pools using waterskins . In the years 775–778 the second Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur , sponsored extensive construction projects in the Masjid al-Haram, which included paving
13098-470: The well using a variety of methods depending on the narration. The wealth of mystic discourses discussing the history of the well is from the Abbasid era and largely extra-Quranic, as the well is not referred to directly by the Quran. According to Islamic tradition, Ibrahim rebuilt a shrine called Arabic : بيت ٱللَّٰه , romanized : Baytu 'l-llah , lit. 'House of God' near
13216-470: The well was stated as c. 500,000 cubic meters (700,000 cu. yd) per year, though due to annual variations in rainfall patterns there exists a lot of deviation with regards to how much water can be extracted without lowering the well's water level too drastically each year. Hydrogeologically , the well is in the Wadi Ibrahim (Valley of Abraham). The upper half of the well is in the sandy alluvium of
13334-408: The well were then supposedly sold due to Abū Tālib's financial troubles to his brother, al-ʿAbbās , who is meant to have instituted the first new ordinance concerning the well by banning all non-religious body-hygienic uses of it. Thus the management of the Zamzam Well (a responsibility called Arabic : سقاية , romanized : siqāya , lit. 'giving of water') was reputedly
13452-488: The well's history supposedly being related to (what they perceive to have been) the true religion of the peoples of Iran , the Islamisation of Iran is to be understood and framed as a rediscovery. The traditional Islamic account of the well's history relayed by al-Azraqī traces the lineage of its management via to Abū Tālib as inherited from its (re)-discoverer and his father ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib . The usage rights to
13570-419: The well's water. They did so by storing two kinds of filled jugs, some on wooden podiums with metal cups attached others hidden in the shade. They performed this service in theory without demanding payment. In 19th century practice however a pilgrim would be assigned a Zamzami upon his arrival and would have been obliged to pay him a small initial sum of $ 1 for a jug to bear his name. This jug would then be kept by
13688-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
13806-472: Was a convert to Islam. The Ottoman establishment of that time had grown to doubt the authenticity of any Muslim cooperating with the British, conceptualising them as not truly Muslim and possibly as being spies. Britain's intellectuals ended up rejecting Robert Koch 's (presently widely accepted) findings of cholera being caused by bacteria. They kept arguing that cholera must be caused by local factors and in
13924-746: Was safe, contradicting the BBC report. The council noted that the Government of Saudi Arabia does not allow the export of Zamzam water for resale. They also stated that it was unknown whether the water being sold in the UK was genuine and that people should not buy it and should report the sellers to the Trading Standards if they saw it for sale. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
#944055