Talk:Qalat (fortress)

Merger to Fortification ?
I oppose merger to Fortification, as qalats are a distinctive form of fortification that have contibuted many place names. It is easy to see here, and does not fit well into the Fortification article. --Bejnar (talk) 22:15, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Agree with the above. Qalat is not just the Persian word for 'fortress;' it refers to a specific type of structure very different from other fortifications. Qalats are distinct enough to warrant their own article. 131.44.121.252 (talk) 20:18, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Subheading - Qala compounds

 * I think this heading should be changed to . Because it describes the properties of qalas in Afghanistan. I cannot do further research about this topic since there aren't any citations on that part of the text. Heading   can be expanded for general properties of qalas.--Visnelma (talk) 18:48, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Rabat, not ribat?
See ribat. Typo? Turkish variant of Arabic word? Or smth. different altogether?

Empty section anyway! Arminden (talk) 07:05, 2 May 2021 (UTC)


 * This is a peculiarity of Arabic orthography and dialects. In Arabic the role of the root plays the triconsonantal root. Here it is r-b-t. The vowels create different words or different dialectal pronunciations. Lembit Staan (talk) 19:38, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
 * hi. Sorry, that's too high for me. I do know that Semitic languages work based on triconsonantal roots, that was exactly my point: isn't there a semantic connection between all words based on the same root, in this case r-b-t? How far can the vowels tear them apart, i.e. give them totally unrelated meanings? And very concretely, nut just on the theoretical level: are ribat and rabat semantically connected? The meaning of words evolves with time, influenced by historical context, maybe contamination, but doesn't a nucleus of the common meaning tied to the 3 consonants remain? It's counterintuitive: both ribat and rabat are fortified places, both are based on r-b-t, and still, I'm reading that ribat initially meant "a place to hold your horses"! Nothing with fortification, unless one constantly associates mounts with horse thieves and thus the need to keep them behind high walls.


 * PS: That source you offered for Qalat is a) lacking all necessary details (title, item/chapter, author/editor, publisher, date, access date), which makes it almost useless. b) What does make it fully useless is that it takes us nowhere, as the URL leads to a book with no preview, not even snippets. Do you have the 1899 Encyclopedia Britannica at home, in print? c) It's a humongous URL for no added value (https://books.google.com/books?id=3rT_CiD5X0MC&pg=PA192&lpg=PA192&dq=rabat+ribat+-wikipedia&source=bl&ots=JMgqo7G47-&sig=ACfU3U2_B0OvspSt_WkxZgo2O-H_cBXpGQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwji6s6I3avwAhUBHzQIHX5nAe8Q6AEwC3oECAwQAw#v=onepage&q=rabat%20ribat%20-wikipedia&f=false), when just ID + page are doing the same job: https://books.google.com/books?id=3rT_CiD5X0MC&pg=PA192


 * But again, it offers nothing as of now. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 21:44, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
 * The source says that this city was called with all these words. also, r-b-t has some other meanings, not relevant to horses and forts. Different sources write of rabat and ribat as of fortresses. It will not be a big overstretch to assume that they both of same origin and meaning. To the bunch go arbat/ arabat, from languages which do not like consonants at the beginning (machine->'mashina (amashina). Also, Qalʻat ar-Rabad, "the castle of the faubourg" or "the castle with the suburbs”. .”. And google has texts similar to what is written in our article, e.g., "of modern Samarkand city and it consists of three main parts: Citadel, Shakhristan and Rabad" . I can readily imagine rabad(suburb) to be somewhat fortified, I see also "citadel, ... shahristan and rabat " . So finally I looked into Ru-wiki, ru:Рабад and it now makes sense. Indeed, the "third circle" is a suburb. And you are right, ribat as described in wikipedia is dubious at the moment. Lembit Staan (talk) 01:09, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * So I quickly concocted Rabad and Shahristan (city area) pages. I will try to create/trace correct wikilinks in wp tomorrow. Lembit Staan (talk) 01:30, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * hi! Great to see your energetic way of getting at it. Still, it might be useful to slow it down a notch :)) Mind that English Wiki has its own rules, which don't look the same as on Russian Wiki. First and foremost, nothing goes without "RS", 'reliable sources', and those are academic papers, scholarly articles and books, but never wikilinks. You cannot support a fact with Wiki data, period. You risk a) having your entire work blanked, removed, and b) using sub-standard information, as Wiki is full of poor or entirely wrong claims and data. But I'm totally looking forward to see what comes out, please ping me when you have something new. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 09:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Here two templates I find very useful when editing: one for quoting sources (pls mind to remove all options which don't apply; the "nowiki" tags also), and one for the Google Books address (URL):
 * If you're using non-English sources, it would be good to add two items: a title translation (look for an official existing translation, translating it by yourself or by using Google Tr. is only second-best), and to indicate the language (the abbreviation is the same as in the URL of that particular Wiki, so de for "deutsch" (German), ru for Russian, etc. Examples (here the Latin name is the common one used everywhere, so no need for an English translation; only leaving just the Hungarian title would be wrong):
 * title=Képes Krónika |trans-title=Chronicon Pictum |lang= hu
 * Google Books: always use .com (not .co.uk or other local versions), and normally use only 2 elements: books?id=.... (12 symbols) followed by &pg=PA... with the page number. That works perfectly well. Only if you think that including the search word, which leads to Google Books showing all pages where it occurs, only then is it worth to copy-and-paste that huge URL address which shows up at the top of the screen. So, an example:
 * https://books.google.com/books?id=QG9SASHlvq0C&pg=PA37 Arminden (talk) 09:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your kind words. I don't intend to spend more time on the subject than my laziness permits :-) I merely noticed something neglected for a long time. I am not an expert in these things and glad that my uneducated edits attracted somebody knowledgeable to continue. Lembit Staan (talk) 15:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your kind words. I don't intend to spend more time on the subject than my laziness permits :-) I merely noticed something neglected for a long time. I am not an expert in these things and glad that my uneducated edits attracted somebody knowledgeable to continue. Lembit Staan (talk) 15:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Qal'at-qal'a = potaytow-potahtoh?
hi! How are you? I think you're the right person to ask: is there any difference between Qalat (fortress) and Qala (or qal'a)? Isn't the -t in qal'at just a connective element to the next word? Or are they spelled in totally different ways in Arabic and the similarity in meaning and Latin transliteration are just pure coincidence? If they are indeed more or less the same, or just regional variants (see Turkish Kale[h] for instance), the articles should be merged. What do you say? Cheers, Arminden (talk) 10:46, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * These questions of yours often remind me (shamefully) that I am illiterate in Arabic. But yes, based on what I know, the "-t" in "qal'at" is the 'connective element to the next word'. Not sure if they should be merged though: Qala is a dab page for articles with that spelling. At best, maybe it should be merged with Qalat (another dab page for similarly named articles) instead of Qalat (fortress)? --Al Ameer (talk) 16:51, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I have a problem with editing when I'm not sure about the topic at hand - the meaning, the exact definition. We need a source clearly stating that qal'a[h] = qal'at, that the ending is just a peculiarity of Arabic. Do you have anyone you can call on? Maybe hi! Can help out with the Arabic? I googled the last letter from qal'a[h] (قلعہ), and Wikipedia only presents it as a final gol he used in Urdu (!), nothing about Arabic. It's probably just another case of the Indian subcontinent being more active on English Wiki, but I can't venture to merge articles with this basic question unanswered.


 * Then the whole field of Muslim fortified places needs to be reorganised in a systematic manner. We have qala, qalat, and qalat (fortress); qasr (there is only a disamb. page listing alcázar, alcazar (disambiguation), Desert castles, and ksar as particular types); and rabat (disambiguation), rabad, robat (disambiguation), and ribat. Just compare with caravanserai, where particular regional terms (caravanserai/caravansary, funduq, khan/han, wikala) are all centralised and placed in a context. Only then did they branch off into secondary lists, disamb. pages and so forth.


 * Regional variants (Arabic terms in Sham, Misr, Maghreb, etc. - Turkish - Persian & Urdu) seem to play a big part in the confusion. I don't know if there really are significant differences in architectural or urban concepts, or just name variants.


 * See also here: there are also hisn/husn (Krak des Chevaliers is "Qalʿat al-Hisn"! Looks like a pleonasm, but there & then they did make a distinction, maybe "fortress with the keep", due to its huge inner castle), qasaba/kasbah, and maʻqil, with shifting meanings covering fortress, citadel, keep. Arminden (talk) 22:58, 3 May 2021 (UTC)


 * A far better source: chronicles used for 'fortress' either qal'a or hisn, very seldom ma'qil, and for frontier fortresses thaghr, pl. thughur. Arminden (talk) 02:00, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Etymology, derived variants
hi. The lead offers two opposing statements: Qalat (kalata) in Persian or qal'a, qal'at in Arabic is a term of Arabic origin meaning 'fortified place'.

For the Persian origin we have a looong reference from 2012: "For the derivation of the Arabic term from the Persian, see Leslau, Wolf (1987) Comparative dictionary of Geʻez (Classical Ethiopic): Geʻez-English, English-Geʻez, with an index of the Semitic roots Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, Germany, page 426, ISBN 978-3-447-02592-8, citing Fraenkel, Siegmund (1886) Die Aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen (The Aramaic Loanwords in Arabic) E.J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, page 237,, in German, reproduced from original in 1962 by Georg Olms, Hildesheim, Germany, , and again in 1982, ISBN 978-3-487-00319-1 and Belardi, Walter (1959) "Arabo قلعة qal‘a" Annali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli - Sezione Linguistica 1: pp. 147&#x2013;150"

For the Arabic origin: we have nothing, Visnelma inserted it recently w/o any additional reference into the middle of Bejnar's 2012, apparently very well-sourced sentence.

Steingass, Francis Joseph (1993) Arabic-English Dictionary Asian Educational Services, New Delhi, page 853, ISBN 978-81-206-0855-9

What shall the poor user understand?
 * Was it a two-way borrowed word, the Arabs took a fitting root or proper noun (not meaning "castle") and gave it the current meaning, which was adopted back with the Arabic-Muslim meaning "castle" by the poor occupied Persians?
 * Has the Persian origin theory been discarded since Fraenkel (1886)?
 * Are both theories quoted in parallel, as nobody can know for sure?

Another problem: Fraenkel looks impressively learned, as does Bejnar, and I'm not: the quoted etymological considerations employ three different abjads plus the Greek alphabet, w/o any attempt at transliterating. I can only guess where the relevant passage is "hiding in plain sight", as I (and most everybody using enWiki) can decipher the Greek at best, or none of the above as a rule. So I can't really make use of the quoted source. Bejnar, can you? I mean: read Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Ge'ez...?

In any case, we need to help the user understand what's written here. So I acted "boldly" and, based on existing sources, went back to Bejnar's well-sourced version.

The many various alternatives were introduced recently by Lembit Staan: Kale, Kaleh, Qala, Qalat, Qila. Any source for that? They were presented as "transliterations", but they are adaptations to different languages and dialects, not just alternate transliterations. Needs fixing. Arminden (talk) 05:48, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Wow, I am really excited because this article gets some attention. First, according to Nişanyan Sözlük the word is of arabic origin.


 * "Arapça ḳlˁ kökünden gelen ḳalˁa(t) قلعة "hisar, kale, müstahkem yer" sözcüğünden alıntıdır. (NOT: Arapça sözcük Orta Farsça aynı anlama gelen yazılı örneği bulunmayan *kalak biçimi ile eş kökenlidir. ) Bu sözcük Akatça aynı anlama gelen kalakku sözcüğünden alıntıdır."


 * (The word is adapted from ḳalˁa(t) قلعة (hisar, kale, fortified place) which originates from the Arabic root ḳlˁ. (NOTE: The Arabic word has the same origin with Middle Persian variant *kalak which has the same meaning and no written record.) This word is adapted from the Akkadian word kalakku which has the same meaning.)


 * By the way, I am not an etymological expert. So, I would be glad if someone clarified what "ˁ", "(t)", and "*" mean. We can also define various terms (such as hisn, ma'qil etc.) and their differences in a table.--Visnelma (talk) 07:58, 4 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Don't rejoice too much, I'm going crazy over the Covid fallout and ended up spending far too much time with Miss Wiki, may she do well w/o me.
 * Etymological expert don't usually end up here, so it's you, me, whoever.
 * I removed a piece of totally misplaced info from Qila and need to park it somewhere, so here it is, maybe it fits somewhere around here, I'm done searching. It mixed up all different variants derived from the Persian and Arabic terms for fortress:
 * "..., alternatively spelled Qalāh or Kalah, Persian, Qila is used in names of places as a prefix (sic!) in Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, and Pakistan."
 * Augias gave Hercules an easier task to solve. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 08:34, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
 * not just alternate transliterations I am not an expert here. But in my understanding, if they are written in the same way, they are different transliterations regardless the reason for different transliteraion. You are free to correct me if I am wrong. I merely collected them in one place . Lembit Staan (talk) 18:28, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Semitic abjads seem to have two different signs for two phonetically related consonants, which are transliterated one as Q and one as K. Otherwise identical word stems differ in meaning depending on the use of the one or the other. Transliterated unacademically they can become any of 3 options, C, K, or Q. So we cannot just guess. Vowels might also play a part, even in a Semitic context, and clearly in a Turkic one. Plus local developments: the same word or a slight derivate might denote a huge stone castle in the Levant, or a dusty clay brick compound in Central Asia. Arminden (talk) 10:52, 26 September 2021 (UTC)


 * , hi. Do you know anything about both Arabic and Persian adopting the word directly from Mesopotamian precursors, i.e. Akkadian? See 's translation of the entry from The Etymological Dictionary of Contemporary Turkish (Nişanyan Sözlük): the Turkish word kale "is adapted from ḳalˁa(t)..., which originates from the Arabic root ḳlˁ. (NOTE: The Arabic word has the same origin with Middle Persian variant *kalak which has the same meaning and no written record. This word is adapted from the Akkadian word kalakku which has the same meaning.)" If this is accepted as the common root, this would be of great help with the etymology. A source, if possible in a Western language, would be greatly welcome – the Turkish online dictionary uses a lot of abbreviations (it doesn't seem to have an online page explaining the abbr.) such as mr., ≈ OFa, * a.a., which makes Visnelma's translation a bit doubtful (he acknowledges not to be a specialist), and a Google translation impossible.


 * Or is Leslau's support for Fraenkel and Belardi still considered more plausible, of Arabic borrowing from Persian, as there's no Arabic root q-l-'a allowing such a meaning?


 * Two theories contradicting each other, with the Akkadian theory making me wonder what the transmission chain might have been, considering that Akkadian was largely extinct as a spoken language by c. the 7th century BCE.


 * Thank you. Arminden (talk) 18:39, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * If you click on "izahlı görünüm" on top right, it explains it with sentences instead of using abbreviations.--V. E. (talk) 18:43, 26 September 2021 (UTC)


 * thank you! That answer came so fast. I was hoping now for some answers, but what Google had to offer is in parts even worse:
 * "ḳalˁa(t) قلعة, which comes from the Arabic root ḳlˁ, is taken from the word "fortress, fortress, fortified place". (NOTE: the Arabic word Middle Persian example of writing the same thing without * kalaka is cognate with the format.) This word Akkadian language mean the same Kalakin is an excerpt from the word."
 * Full text – check. Meaning and implications – back to the same questions. But thanks again for the swift reply! Arminden (talk) 18:48, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I said that I am not an expert but I can tell you that my translation above is mostly accurate: --V. E. (talk) 18:54, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * You can think hisar like castleish and kale like fortress.--V. E. (talk) 18:58, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * , I apologise if I sounded more skeptical than I was. I do take your translation very seriously. What it doesn't solve: which word is "adapted from the Akkadian word kalakku", the Arabic, Persian, or both? "This word" is not a clear way to put it. The previous part would boil down to: AR → TURK and AKK → AR (and maybe PERS too). Can't get the meaning behind that. Can you?
 * Anyway, this seems to contradict the Fraenkel-Belardi-Leslau theory, PERS → AR, argued quite logically with the fact that the triliteral root k-l-'a can in no reasonable way be bent to lead to "fortification". Two theories aren't bad in principle, except that here we have three heavyweights on one side, and a dictionary I don't know much about, with a equivocal, somewhat imprecise wording and no reference to known specialists. It is hard to offer it the same weight as to Fraenkel-Belardi-Leslau, published by Harrassowitz, Brill, and AION-S. Sevan Nişanyan looks like a fascinating personality, but he isn't a philologist by any stretch, so the Nişanyan Dictionary is less of a reliable source, wouldn't you agree? Cheers, Arminden (talk) 01:14, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * It says both words share the same origin, so, both AR and PERS words originate from AKK.--V. E. (talk) 09:07, 27 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. At least from the translation it's not obvious, Nişanyan says neither "both", nor does he use the plural, he uses the singular: "This word is adapted from the Akkadian...". So it can be read as: AKK kalakku → MPers kalak → AR qal'a → TRK kale. Middle Persian seems to have been in use in C3–C7 or C9 the latest, so exactly in time for the Arab conquest, and this looks like quite a logical evolution, phonetically it makes perfect sense, but that's the danger: it might be based on a logical supposition, not on research. Nişanyan could have been clearer - and he doesn't have any degree in philology or anything close anyway (philosophy and political science are very different disciplines). We are left with a good sounding theory, but from an unclear an less than fully reliable source. If he picked it up himself from a RS, then that's what we need here. Arminden (talk) 01:43, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's correct, he uses singular bu which refers to the Arabic word (i.e. the word before the note in paranthesis); however, in the previous sentence (i.e. in the note in paranthesis) he also says both words share the same origin, that's why regardless of whether bu is singular or plural they both originate from AKK. I must note that he doesn't comment on whether AR word comes from MPers or vice versa.--V. E. (talk) 04:47, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's the problem in terms of etymology: origin, chain of steps. Either separate evolution from AKK, or AR from MPers, or vice versa - here you have it, 3 different logically possible permutations. Plus the other problems I've mentioned. So good enough to be mentioned, but not the ultimate RS by any means. I looked up how Nişanyan is discussed online and the only comment I could find pointed out that his is the only, or first, online etymological dictionary, with more comprehensive ones out there, that he doesn't often comprehend the inner workings of Turkish and how Turkish words came to be, and that he's very good at collecting material, but not at questioning and combining sources. Who knows how correct that assessment is, I'm just mentioning it, as it was posted on etymonline.com's own FB page. What Academia.org has to say about the man who made the posting is "studies Turcology, Sumerian, and Egyptology" - not an established luminary either. Arminden (talk) 11:57, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Arabic script
The book literally uses the wording as I wrote in the text (I don't know why but then I try to copy paste it here the wording changes). I had the same result as you using transliteration engine. But when I omit the middle part it works perfectly: حصون (ḥṣwn) and حصن (ḥṣn). We need someone with Arabic script knowledge to figure it out, because that is out of my league. Also do you have any sources to support that "rabad is a variation of rabat"?--V. E. (talk) 20:56, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Also qala seems to be more common than qalat when I search in Google Scholar.--V. E. (talk) 21:14, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Shouldn't we merge it
Qalat or Kale (depending on where you were born) is literally means castle and most of the content in this article either must be in castle or Wiktionary. So wouldn't be better if we merge it or try to improve the article? Which if we will improve it, it eventually becomes a duplicate of the castle with extra nuans. (unsigned)


 * Castle in English is a particular type of fortress. Here and especially at kale we have castles and fortresses, but also lesser fortified places, like Central Asian compounds. As we do have articles for specific Western castle and fortress types, this here also has a justification. But yes, it's very wanting still, the definitions for Muslim fortifications by these names could be sharper. Arminden (talk) 10:36, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I actually agree with the unsigned comment above. "Qal'at" is a word, not a type of fortress distinct from other fortresses/citadel-type topics, and the content here seems to be just a description of fortresses in specific regions where this word is used. The fact that the lead is mostly about defining the "term" (notably statements like "The term is used in the entire Muslim world to indicate a defensive fortress"), rather than defining what is distinct about this type of fortress, is a clear indication of that. I've come across a few articles of this nature (i.e. vaguely based around a non-English word), and this creates a number of problems including arbitrary overlap with other articles and possible disregard for WP:ENGLISH and WP:NOT.
 * That said, I'm not sure what the best merging option would be. Fortification seems like the default place to do this (rather than castle). The fact that the "Islamic world" section of that article is just a flurry of links to a bunch of different words and disambiguation pages suggests that we need some coordinated clean-up across multiple pages to potentially resolve this. Another option instead of merging might be to create an article about fortifications in particular regions of the world (which regions exactly could be up to debate), which seems like it would accomplish the same purpose as this article (and other articles of this nature), while avoiding the issues of poorly-defined scope/topic. If we want to make an article about fortifications in the historic Islamic world, for example, I think that would be reasonably justified as it would be an easy subtopic of both fortification and Islamic architecture which could be linked to in those articles. R Prazeres (talk) 01:55, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Hisar and hisn
Could 'hisar' be a Turkic derivate of Arabic 'hisn'? Arminden (talk) 11:11, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, hisar comes from the Arabic root ḥṣr.--V. E. (talk) 14:32, 26 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I see, thank you. Now I see Rajki has "fortress; blockade" for hhissar and "fortress" for hhissn, both also borrowed into Persian. No clue if they're written ḥṣr and ḥṣn with no other difference. If so, probably ḥṣr as a root means something like to stop/block. I don't know anything about the possibility of roots being related and if n and r can ever be swapped with each other. Probably not. Arminden (talk) 11:31, 28 September 2021 (UTC)