Some words on this site are English. Some are not. This page explains the ones that are not, and — just as importantly — tells you which words we deliberately translate instead.
Note
You do not need any of this to use the site. Nothing here is a test. If a word turned up somewhere and sent you looking for its meaning, that is our failure to explain it in place, and we would like to know.
Why this page exists
The Names We Use explains the names we invented — Athenaeum, Lyceum, Odeum — and why most of them are English. The short version is that Islam is too often made to feel foreign in the West, arriving with its own vocabulary and asking you to learn the vocabulary before you are allowed in. We decline to help with that.
This page is the other half of the same promise. Some words come from the tradition itself. We did not choose them and we cannot rename them, and translating a few of them would lose the thing they name.
There are two kinds of reader we are writing for, and they pull in opposite directions:
- Someone who has never met a Muslim, for whom every untranslated word is a small locked door.
- Someone who grew up with these words, half-remembers them, and may already be tired of how Islam has been presented to them.
Rendering nohe as "lamentation poetry" to the second reader is not clarity, it is sanitising — and being talked around is its own kind of dismissal. Leaving nohe unexplained fails the first reader entirely.
A glossary is what removes the need to choose. It is not a vocabulary list you must learn to be let in. It is us doing the explaining, in one place, so that nobody has to already know.
The test we apply
A word from the tradition earns its place here on two conditions, both of which have to hold:
Is it doing work no English word does — and have we explained it?
That is checkable, which "does it feel foreign?" is not. Athenaeum is not a common English word either; it earns its place by being explained, without apology. The same test, and the same answer, applies to maqtal.
When an English word does the job honestly, we use the English word. Those are listed further down, because knowing what we chose not to keep is part of the same explanation.
Words we keep
Majlis
A gathering held to remember, to mourn and to learn — usually with a talk, poetry and recitation. The plural is majalis.
"Meeting" is too administrative and "service" imports the wrong tradition. A majlis is a specific kind of gathering with a shape people recognise.
Maqtal
An account of a death — most often the killing of Imam Husayn and his companions at Karbala — narrated rather than summarised.
English has no single word for this. "Martyrdom narrative" is a description, not a name, and it describes the genre from outside it.
Nohe
Lamentation poetry, recited or sung, mourning a death.
Nasheed
A vocal piece performed without instruments, or with percussion only.
Marsiya
An elegy — a poem composed in mourning, usually longer and more narrative than a nohe.
Latmiya
Lamentation recited to a rhythm kept by the hand against the chest.
Azadari
The whole practice of mourning and commemoration, taken together — the gatherings, the poetry, the processions and the years of it.
"Mourning" names the feeling. Azadari names the practice, which is a different thing and the thing we usually mean.
Ziyarah
A visitation — travelling to a shrine to greet the person buried there. The word also names the text recited when doing so, which is why you will see it used for both a journey and a reading.
Words we translate
These have perfectly good Arabic names too. We use the English, because the English does the work without losing anything.
| We say | Rather than | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Sermon | khutbah | "Sermon" is exact, and everyone already has it. |
| Supplication | dua | A direct address to God. The English carries it fully. |
| Recitation | tilawah | Reading aloud, as the Qur'an is meant to be read. |
| Couplets | abyat | A poetic form, and the English names the form precisely. |
If you see one of these in its Arabic form somewhere on the site, that is drift on our part rather than a decision, and it is worth telling us about.
A door, not a gate
Every word above is a label on a door that is already open. If a word on this site ever feels like it needs a password, we have made a mistake — and this page is where we would fix it.
This is a living page. Words are added when they earn a place by the test above, and removed when an English word turns out to do the job after all.