Extract from the Encyclopaedia of Islam CD-ROM Edition v.1.

ABAD (or Abaad or Ab ad)

, the first of the eight mnemotechnical terms into which the twenty-eight consonants of the Arabic alphabet were divided. In the East, the whole series of these voces memoriales is ordered and, in general, vocalized as follows: "abad hawwaz uiy kalaman sa#fa araat aa aa. In the West (North Africa and the Iberian peninsula groups no. 5, 6 and 8 were differently arranged; the complete list was as follows: "abaid hawazin uiyin kalamnin a#fain urisat au ain. [I 97b] The first six groups of the Oriental series preserve faithfully the order of the "Phoenician" alphabet. The last two, supplementary, groups consisted of the consonants peculiar to Arabic, called, for this reason, rawdif, "mounted on the hind-quarters". From a practical point of view, this arrangement of the alphabet has only one point of interest, namely that the Arabs (like the Greeks) gave each letter a numerical value, according to its position. The twenty-eight characters are thus divided into three successive series of nine each: units (1 to 9), tens (10 to 90), hundreds (100 to 900), and "thousand". Naturally, the numerical value corresponding to each of the letters that belong to groups no. 5, 6 and 8 differs in the Oriental and the Occidental systems. The use of the Arabic characters as numerals has always been limited and exceptional; the ciphers proper (cf. isb) have taken their place. Nevertheless, they are used in the following cases: (i) on astrolabes; (ii) in chronograms, usually versified (epigraphic or otherwise), formed according to the system called al-ummal (see isb and ta"r). (iii) in various divinatory procedures and in composing certain talismans (type of bdw = 2.4 6.8 see bud). Even in our own days the libs of North Africa use the numerical value of the letters for certain magical operations, according to the system called aya (1.10.100.1000); a specialist in this technique is called in the vernacular ya; (iv) in the pagination, according to the modern convention, of prefaces and tables of contents, where we would use the Roman letters. This "abecedarian" order to the Arabic letters does not actually correspond to anything, whether from the point of view of phonetics or of graphical representation. To be sure, it is very old. For the first twenty-two letters, it appears already in a tablet discovered at Ra"s amra which gives the list of the cuneiform signs that constitute the alphabet of the people of Ugarit in the 14th century B.C. (Ch. Virolleaud, L'abecedaire de Ras Shamra, GLECS, 1950, 57). Its Canaanite origin, at least, is therefore certain; but moreover, the order was kept in the Hebrew and Aramean alphabet, and was, no doubt, taken over by the Arabs together with the latter. Yet the Arabs, having no knowledge of the other Semitic languages and moreover full of prejudices arising from their strong self-consciousness and their national pride, sought other explanations for the mnemotechnic words abad etc., handed down by tradition and incomprehensible to them. All that they had to say on this head, however interesting, is but a fable. According to one version, six kings of Madyan arranged the Arabic letters after their own names; according to another tradition, the first six groups are the names of six demons; a third tradition explains them as the names of the days of the week. Sylvestre de Sacy has noted the fact that in these traditions only the first six words are used, and that, e.g., Friday is not called aa, but #urba; yet it is not admissible to base on such vague traditions the conclusion that the Arabic alphabet had originally only twenty-two letters (J. A. Sylvestre de Sacy, Grammaire arabe2, ii, par. 9). In fact, even among the Arabs there were some more enlightened grammarians, such as al-Mubarrad and al-Srf, who, not satisfied with the legendary explanations of abad, straightforwardly declared that these mnemotechnic words were of foreign origin. There is, however, one noteworthy detail among [I 98a] these fabulous indications. One of the six kings of Madyan had the supremacy over the others (ra"suhum); this was Kalaman, whose name is perhaps somehow connected with the Latin elementum. For the other arrangement of the alphabet which exists alongside this "abecedarian" order and which is the one currently employed, see urf al-hi". It may be added that in North Africa the adjective bdjd is still alive, with the acceptation of "beginner,
2001 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

Extract from the Encyclopaedia of Islam CD-ROM Edition v.1.1

tiro, green", literally, "one still at the abecedarian stage" (cf. the Perisan-Turkish abad-khwn, English abecedarian, German Abcschler). (G. Weil [G.S. Colin*]) Lane, Lex. s.v. abad; TA, s.v. bd; Fihrist, 4-5 Cantor, Vorl. ber Gesch. d. Math.3 i, 709 Th. Nldeke, Die semitischen Buchstabennamen, in Beitraege zur semit. Sprachwiss., 1904, 124 H. Bauer, Wie ist die Reihenfolge der Buchstaben im Alphabet zustande gekommen, ZDMG, 1913, 501 G. S. Colin, De l'origine grecque des "chiffres de Fes" et de nos "chiffres arabes", JA, 1933, 193 J. Fevrier, Histoire de l'ecriture, 1948, 222 D. Diringer, The Alphabet, 1948 M. G. de Slane, Les Prolegomenes d'Ibn Khaldoun, i, 241-53 E. Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in Morocco, i, 144 E. Doutte, Magie et religion dans l'Afrique du Nord, 172-95.

2001 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands