ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2651
http://www.s-gabriel.org/2651
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* NOTE: Later research turned up additional     *
*       information relevant to this report.    *
*       See the end of the letter for details.  *
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6 May 2003
From: Josh Mittleman 


Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!

You asked us to suggest a late 15th or early 16th century Arabic name
meaning "Safya the singer, daughter of Ziyad of Cairo".  You had
previously expressed interest in <Suhayb> as your father's name.  Here
is what we have found.

As we noted earlier, <Safya> is a fine choice [but please see the
correction below]; it was the name of one of the wives of the prophet
Mohammed and we have found several examples of it in our period [1,
2].  <Ziyad> is a fine name for your father, too [3].  We were earlier
unable to find evidence of <Suhayb>, but now have a good indication
that it was the name of one of the companions of Mohammed and
therefore a plausible name for your culture [4].

The Arabic word for "[female] singer" is <al-mughanniiyah> [5],
pronounced \ahl-moo-ghahn-NEE-yah\ [10].  The \GH\ stands for the
voiced equivalent of the raspy <ch> sound in the Scottish word <loch>
or German <Bach>.

The word for "[male] Cairene" is <al-Qaahirah> [5].  However, we
recommend that you avoid this byname: We have found no example of it
in period sources.  The original name of the city of Cairo is
<al-Qahirah al-Mu'izziyyah> "the Victorious [city] of [the caliph]
Mu'izz li-Din Allah", since shortened to <al-Qahirah> [6].  A byname
meaning "the victorious" might have been seen as inappropriate or it
might simply have been grammatically inconvenient to construct a
byname from this place name.  In any case, men from Cairo seem to have
been identified as <al-Misri> "the Egyptian" rather than "the Cairene"
[7, 8].  Two 10th century examples are [9]:

  Abu al-Hasan 'Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Misri
  Ibn al-Imam al-Misri

We therefore recommend you use <Safya al-Mughanniiyah bint Ziyad
al-Misri> or <Safya al-Mughanniiyah bint Suhayb al-Misri> [but please
see the correction below].


We hope this letter has been useful.  Please write us again if any
part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions.  I was
assisted in researching and writing this letter by Sion Andreas,
Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Maridonna Benvenuti, Adelaide de Beaumont, and
Da'ud ibn Auda.

For the Academy,


  Arval Benicoeur
  6 May 2003


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References

[1] Academy of S. Gabriel report 1971
http://www.s-gabriel.org/1971

[2] Juliana de Luna, "Andalusian Names: Arabs in Spain" (WWW: Academy of
Saint Gabriel, 2001).
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/juliana/andalusia/

[3] Mustapha al-Muhaddith ibn al-Saqaat, "Arabic Personal Names from the
Futuwwah", ed. Arval Benicoeur and Avelina of the Bridge (WWW: Academy
of Saint Gabriel, 1999)
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/mustapha/futuwwah.html.

[4] "Suhayb Ar-Rumi" (WWW: The Sabr Foundation, accessed 29 Apr 2003)
http:/www.islam101.com/people/companions/rumi.html 
says that <Suhayb ibn Sinan> was one of the companions of Mohammed.

[5] Wehr, Hans, _A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic_, edited by
J. Milton Cowan, 3rd ed. (Ithaca, NY: Spoken Language Services, Inc.,
1976).

[6] Glasse/, Cyril, _The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam_ (San Francisco:
Harper San Francisco, 1991), p.81.

[7] Ja:schke, Richard "English-Arabic Conversational Dictionary" (New
York: F. Ungar Publishing Co., 1955), p.169.

[8] Elias, E. A., _Elias' Modern Dictionary: English-Arabic_ (W.S. Heinman,
June 1988), p.22.

[9] Dodge, Baynard, _The Fihrist of al-Nadim_ (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1970), vol.2, p.1045.

[10] We are not certain where the stress fell in the medieval
pronunciation of this phrase.  It varies in modern dialects.  Our
suggestion here is based on a rule offered by Alan S. Kaye, in his
article "Arabic" in Comrie, Bernard, ed., _The World's Major
Languages_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

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Correction, Arval, 27 Apr 2004: Talan checked the Arabic of the
Mohammed's wife's name; a better transcription is <S.afiiyah>, where
the period represents a dot under the 'S', indicating an emphatic
consonant.  The pronunciation of emphatic consonants is difficult to
explain; we recommend finding a native Arabic speaker to get a
demonstration.