Saturday, January 21, 2017

On "Root of word Ramadhan"

(I think it was 1997 when I took Egypt Air to go to Pakistan for renewal of my exchange visa. Egypt Air used to give stay at Cairo without any additional fare. I stopped at Egypt for 5 days and took a tour package of Cairo, Nile, Aswan, Luxor, Edfu etc. Our tour guide was a PhD university teacher of Egyptology. He was working as a tour guide, as his second job, to support his family. His name was Ramadhan. He was very happy to see a Muslim in his otherwise all gora group. He told me something, which I wrote in my diary. Today, I was looking for something and it brought back tons and thousands of memories with its full vividness. After giving all details of my name, he gave me Arabic root derivative of his name Ramadhan. While I am writing this post, his visiting card is lying in front of me and I have a smile on my face.)

The 3 letters root of word Ramadan in Arabic is "Ray-Meem-Zuad" (ر  م  ض), and  "ramd" means "very very hot sand under the full glory of the sun". When Arabs decided to get away from the ancient calendar, and the new calendar was formed the month which fell at the hottest time was called "Shahre Ramadan" or "month of hot sand". Previously it was called  Natiqun (means (make you) scream loud)*. Fasting in this month is probably the hardest thing and maybe that's why this month is chosen in Islam to test, prepare, self-disciplined or whatever you want to make out of it.

(in reality, it rotates through every season as lunar calendar is about 10 days shorter than solar calendar)

* On ancient arab/islamic calendar conversion::  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Islamic_calendar

1 comment:

bsc said...

I have learned today I did not know the real root indeed
What is said in farsi is true on my
پیر شو بیا موز