Words Arabic Took In
klima
الإقْليم
iqlīm
Iqlīm, 'region', is Greek klima, 'slope'. Classical scholars disagreed: Ibn Durayd said it is 'not purely Arabic', al-Azhari thought it Arabic, 'cut off' from the land. Al-Biruni explained it as 'inclination', the Greek sense. The geographers divided the inhabited world into seven iqlīms; al-Muqaddasi used the word for the great regions of Islam, six Arab and eight non-Arab. English climate comes from the same Greek word.
- Came
- From Greek
- Original meaning
- slope, inclination
- Meaning in Arabic
- a region
«فالأقاليم أربعة عشر، ستّة عربيّة: جزيرة العرب، ثمّ العراق، ثمّ أقور، ثمّ الشام، ثمّ مصر، ثمّ المغرب. وثمانية عجميّة: المشرق، ثمّ الديلم، ثمّ الرحاب، ثمّ الجبال، ثمّ خوزستان، ثمّ فارس، ثمّ كرمان، ثمّ السند.»
Ibn Durayd wrote in al-Jamhara (2/1193) that iqlīm 'is not purely Arabic'; Ibn Sida and Lisan al-'Arab report him as saying 'I do not think it Arabic'. Al-Azhari wrote in Tahdhib al-Lugha (9/148): 'I think it Arabic'.
Yaqut quotes al-Biruni: iqlīm 'is inclination, as if they meant the dwellings inclined away from the equator' (Mu'jam al-Buldan 1/25).
English climate came from Greek through Latin, not through Arabic; we found no European word taken from Arabic iqlīm.
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