Crusades

Page out of Tashrīḥi Manṣūri, about 1450
visible are arteries and nerves

Even if the "dark"' Middle Ages in Christian Europe was not as backward as often claimed, the high culture of Islamic countries was amazing.

• writings, knowledge from ancient times                          
• Trade with Africa, India, China                          
• Promotion of science and art  
• Tolerance towards "book believers"

provided for a rich culture, which was often adopted by the crusaders.

Cultural Exchange

The crusaders encountered many things in the Orient that they did not yet know. Often they did not invent their own words for new things, but adopted the already existing Arabic word. Many terms show the influence of Arabic on the English language:

ORANGE برتقال		fruit, originally from South and East Asia, known in Sanskrit as naranga, which became the Arabic naranj.
ALCOHOL (الكُحُـــــــــول.)		an extraction process from a mineral, European chemists began to refer to anything involving extraction/distillation as alcohol.
ALCHEMY & CHEMISTRY (الكيميـــــــــاء.)		put together
ALGEBRA (الجبــر)		a mathematical discipline
ARTICHOKE		variety of a species of thistle cultivated as food.
CANDY (from قندي)		“hard sweets made by boiling cane sugar”
COFFEE (قهوة)		for long snubbed by Europeans as the “wine of the infidels”—that is, many centuries before the age of Starbucks and instant coffee!

part 2

SOFA (الصُفــــــــة)		cushioned item of furniture for seating multiple people	raised, carpeted platform on which people sat.
SUGAR (سكر)		Sanskrit (śarkarā), meaning "ground or candied sugar"
CIPHER (صِفـــــــــــــــــــــــــــر)		Arabic word for zero صفر (sifr)	not easily understood, so used for encrypted code
ELIXIR (الإكسيــــــــــــــر)		like a syrup
SODA (صـــــــــودا.)		chemical compounds containing sodium

part 3

ADMIRAL (أميــــــــر الرحلة)		commander of the fleet
ARSENAL ( دار الصناعــــــــــــــــة )		manufacturing house where weapons for the navy are made
MAGAZINE ( مجلة)		store house
ASSASSIN (حشَّــــــــــــــاشين”)		hitman, murderer
COTTON (قُطْـــــــــن)		soft, fluffy staple fiber used for textiles
MATTRESS (مطـــــــــــــــــــرح.)		large, usually rectangular pad where you can lie and sleep

Arabic, Latin or Greek?

Some words originated in Greek, were translated into Arabic and found their way into the English language:

Sort the loan words after their original language:

Arabic	guitar	alcohol	cipher	algebra	safran	tariff	tambourine	artichoke	safari
Greek	philosophy	tragedy	Maths	democracy	monologue
Latin	cherry	wine	process	jurist	peach	chamber	street

Sort the following Arabic loan words after topics:

Spice / Fruit Beverages	coffee	alcohol	lemonade	safran	muskat	orange	sugar	peach
Textiles	cotton	damast	jacket	German: Kittel	German: Mütze
Furniture	mattress	sofa	mosaik	diwan	baldachin
Music	lute (German: Laute)	guitar	tambourine	fanfare trumpet
Science	cipher	algebra	elixir	azure	algorithm	risk

counting and calculating

The merchant and mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci from Pisa triggered a mathematical revolution with his book "Liber abaci". He noticed:

The nine numbers of the Indians are: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I.
With them and with the sign 0, which is called "sifr" in Arabic,

you can write every number you want.

Aufgabe

1. Where do the "Arabic" numbers really come from?
2. How do you pronounce 0 in English? Do you know which original language it's from?
3. Compare the addition tasks below with each other and then fill in the missing words in the following text.

Roman Numerals

MM

+     XVIII

_____________________

MMXVIII

=================

Arabic Numerals

2000

+         18

_____________________

2018

=================

The numerical values are the same in both tasks. There are two advantages to written arithmetic with Arabic numerals:

With the Roman numerals, there is no numeral sign for the numerical value zero.

In the spoken form, Roman numerals, like Arabic numerals, are structured according to the ten system. In the written form, however, the Roman numerals lack the division into "ones", "tens", "hundreds", "twos" and "threes". hundreds, etc.

Vocabulary

crusader = Kreuzzügler, Kreuzritter

crusade = Kreuzzug

crusade = religious war to free the Holy Land (= Jerusalem, Palestine)

Why - because pilgrims wanted to visit the place where Jesus had lived.

Weblinks

• https://www.indy100.com/viral/words-we-borrowed-arabic
• https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/top-50-english-words-of-arabic-origin/