Recently I served a drink that is served in such a way that there’s bubbles at the top. Among them, my Tareemi guests, joked that this drink has soap in it. It is called Teh Tarik (literal translation: Pulled Tea), what can be assumed as Malaysia’s national drink. However this picture is about a book and I’ll connect the two shortly.
One of my teachers for an extra class on Arabic morphology started the class by first giving us a summary of the science and history of the development of the science of the Arabic language. It blew us away as it was clear that the language has no peers. He highlighted that the Arabic dictionary, is not a reference text but a book on its own.
It is said that the likes of Shaykh Hamza Yusuf wouldn’t go on a long journey without bringing one from those multiple volume Arabic dictionaries. When he was 19 and couldn’t afford EW Lane’s Arabic-English costly dictionary, the Co-Founder and Director of Fons Vitae publishing, told him to pay whatever he can afford.
The photo shows what can be called an after-party. Habib Kadzim al-Saqqaff is hanging back with some of the other guests, schoolmates of mine, drinking..bubbled tea, with a dictionary in hand. The sweetness of some things can’t be defined even by a dictionary, so to know it’s taste, do consider drinking some Arabic for her bubbles aren’t of soap.
