The Arab contribution to civilisation

Language is a marvellous recorder of meetings between cultures, a living museum. For proof of this, one need look no further than the ports of the Mediterranean, where linguistic boundaries are scorned and their rules broken; thus are linguae francae created.

The following lines (freely translated from Sigrid Hunke's Le soleil d'Allah brille sur l'occident: notre héritage arabe) are a playful presentation of just some of the terminology – and objects – that the West has borrowed from the Arabs.

The Spice of Daily Life. Or, Arab Names for Arab Gifts.

"Might I invite you to have something with me in this café? Take off your jacket and sit down here on this sofa, unless you would rather sit on the divan with the crimson mattress, of course. Would you like a cup of coffee – with one sugar lump or two? Or perhaps a nice cool carafe of lemonade, or even something alcoholic?

"But of course! Let me buy you lunch! I think artichokes would be a lovely starter, don't you? And how about capon with rice and spinach to follow? For dessert, what would you say to a piece of apricot tart, or an orange sorbet? And at the end of the meal we'll have a cup of mocha.

There is no reason, of course, for any of these things to appear in any way strange or exotic to you – they have been part of our daily life for such a long time. But did you know that they were all borrowed from a foreign culture, namely Arab culture? This café and the demitasses of coffee they serve, the sugar without which any menu would be almost unimaginable, the lemonade and the carafe, the jacket and the mattress, we owe them all to the Arabs. And it doesn't stop there: in most European countries, these things are known by their Arabic names! And the same goes for candy, bergamot, oranges, sherbet and many other good things besides.

Well, you might say, there's nothing so surprising about fruits that grow in hot countries (and even certain foodstuffs and drinks) coming from the Orient; and, that being the case, why shouldn't they keep their original names, after all?

As for the sofa or the divan, or the ottoman in the alcove, on which it is so nice to flop down – well, any child could tell you that such exotic sounding words could only be 'foreign'. Morocco leather – there's another easy one. But what about the textiles that you might find alongside your morocco leather bags in the same shop? There's muslin and other cotton cloths, soft and supple mohair, elegant satin, distinguished taffeta, shimmering moiré, sumptuous damask (originally from the city of Damascus), and all in such a range of shades, from saffron through orange and carmine to lilac. So many gentle reminders that it is to the Arabs that we owe these useful and precious fabric as well as their striking colours.

But you also encounter a host of Arab "discoveries" whenever you set foot in a pharmacy or a herbalist's. You only need glance at the labels on the jars and draws: you might find camphor, benjoin and benzine, soda, borax and saccharine, perhaps also amber, gum Arabic and cumin, not to mention tarragon, ginger and saffron – all of them Arab drugs with Arabic names. The gauze, talc or hair lacquer that you might buy at the pharmacy are also of Arabic origin, as are numerous chemical terms such as alkali or aniline.

There's no denying that a great many of the Arabic words which have found their way into our language designate items of everyday use to which the Arabs introduced us. Nor that these things have added countless delicate touches to our previously insipid – even rather squalid – lives, literally "spicing" them up, enriching them with new colours and new scents. In fact, we in the West ought to thank the Arabs for making our lives healthier and more hygienic, as well as more comfortable and elegant.

So there you are – checkmated! And once again, we're using Arabic without even thinking about it. Because the expression "checkmate" – which comes of course from chess, a game that is said to have been introduced to Europe by an emissary of the Caliph Harun Al-Rashid, who taught Charlemagne's court how to play it – is a direct derivation of the Arabic al-shah mat, meaning simply "the king (shah) died"!

Amazing!