Today's light · Saturday 19 September
Muslin, damask and mohair are place names or Arabic words
Textiles were the largest manufacturing industry of the medieval Muslim world, and the trade left its vocabulary in European languages. Muslin is named for Mosul and damask for Damascus. Mohair is mukhayyar, meaning choice or selected. Taffeta is the Persian taftah. Cotton is qutn, and sash is shash, a length of fine cloth wound as a turban. Some other favourites are guesswork: gauze from Gaza and satin from the Arabic name for the Chinese port of Quanzhou are marked uncertain in the dictionaries, and should be repeated with that attached. State workshops wove bands of inscription, tiraz, into robes, naming the ruler and the year, and a robe from the ruler's own wardrobe was a political act as much as a gift. The dyers left words as well. Crimson comes through Arabic qirmiz, the insect that gave the red.
Tiraz workshops and the cloth trade
Saturday 19 September 2026 · 6 Rabi ath-Thani 1448 AH
The word · Law and life
الزِّنا
Zina
Sexual intercourse outside marriage: a major sin, and one of the fixed penalty offences.
The Qur'an says do not go near it, calling it an immorality and an evil way, and the wording is read as forbidding the approaches to it as well as the act. The penalty carries a bar of proof so high it is almost never reached, four upright witnesses to the act itself, and the same passage punishes those who make the accusation without them. Islamic law discourages prying, and consistently prefers concealment and…
The Path · chapter 64 of 71
النفخ في الصور
The Trumpet: Two Blasts
Two blasts: all fall dead except whom Allah wills, then, at once, standing and looking on.
The Horn is already at the lip, every plan is drafted inside a held breath
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