Ragusa-Palermo-Byron Bay-San Felice dei Circe-Lahore
August 2001-August 2004
GLOSSARY
Al-Andalus
Islamic Spain
Amir
Commander
Amir
al-kitab
Commander of the Book
Amir
al-bahr
Commander of the Sea and from which ‘Admiral’ is derived
Allahu Akbar
God is Great
Atrabanashi
Trapani
Balansiya
Valencia
Djirdjent
Agrigento
Gharnata
Granada
Habibi
my love; from which ‘hey, baby!’ is not derived
Hammam
public or private baths
Ifriqiya
North Africa
Ishbilia
Seville
Jiddu
granddad
Khutba
the Friday sermon at the mosque
Lanbadusha
Lampedusa
Malaka
Malaga
Marsa Ali
Marsala
mehfil
a meeting/assembly, often by invitation; from which ‘mafia’ is not derived
qadi/kadi
the Chief Law Officer of a Muslim city with extraordinary powers to preserve order
Qurlun
Corleone
Qurtuba
Cordoba
Shakka
Sciacca
Siqilliya
Sicily
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tariq Ali is a novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. His many books include The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity; Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq; Conversations with Edward Said; Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties; and the novels of the Islam Quintet. He is the coauthor of On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation and an editor of the New Left Review, and he writes for the London Review of Books and the Guardian. Ali lives in London.