Arabic in Cards Plants with Arabic Names

Plants with Arabic Names

Alhagi

العاقول

Alhagi maurorum

A thorny shrub camels graze in the desert. Its scientific name, Alhagi, is Arabic al-ḥāj with its article; al-Qamus al-Muhit defines al-ḥāj simply as 'thorn'. The German botanist Rauwolf brought the name into botany after his journey to the East.

Source of the name
From an Arabic word
From the Arabic word
al-ḥāj
Genus
Alhagi
Species shown
Alhagi maurorum
«والحاجُ: شَوْكٌ.»
The path between languagesal-ḥāj → alhagi (1717) → Alhagi

More on this word

Wadghiri (1/102–103) dates the French word to 1717: 'thorny plants of medicinal use, imported from the East and especially from Egypt'. He quotes Ibn al-Baytar's al-Jamiʿ: al-ḥāj 'is a thorny shrub known in Syria and Egypt as al-ʿāqūl'.

Lisan al-ʿArab: 'al-ḥāj is a plant of the saltbush kind; some say a kind of thorn'; its singular is ḥāja.

Flowers of camel thorn (Alhagi maurorum)
Flowers of camel thorn (Alhagi maurorum)
Eitan Ferman, CC BY-SA 3.0

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Sources

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