---
title: "The Words We Use"
description: "A plain-English glossary of the terms used across Truth Promoters — majlis, maqtal, nohe, nasheed, marsiya, latmiya, azadari and ziyarah — with the reasoning for which words we keep and which we translate."
canonical_url: "https://www.truthpromoters.com/help/glossary"
type: "help"
section: "Help Center"
keywords: "Islamic glossary, Shia terms explained, what does majlis mean, what does maqtal mean, what does nohe mean, azadari meaning"
---

# The Words We Use

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](/help/our-names) 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.*

## Related topics

- [The Names We Use](https://www.truthpromoters.com/help/our-names) — What Reflections, Vignettes, Athenaeum, Lyceum and Odeum mean, and why we chose them
- [Getting Started](https://www.truthpromoters.com/help/getting-started) — Learn about our mission, explore features, and get started
- [Listening to the Site](https://www.truthpromoters.com/help/listening) — Play articles and recordings, build a queue, and pick up where you left off