Arabized place names in Yâqût Al-Hamawi's Mujam Al-Buldan (a linguistic study)

Al-Ta'rib can be defined as the adaptation of foreign words or phrases to the structure of Arabic words. Our study revolves around how this phenomenon is applied to the names of places in the book Mujam al-Buldan. In this research, it appeared that the number of Arabized words that were identified in the lexicon of countries is about eighty-nine words. These words were transferred to Arabic from different languages. For example, while there are six words taken from the Byzantine language, there are two words from the Persian, Syriac, and Abyssinian languages and one word from the Hebrew language. In this book, it is noted that upon Arabization, the words undergo some changes in order to adapt to the structural features of the Arabic language. It was also noted that the primary methods used by al-Hamawi in determining the Arabicized names were the criteria of narration, sound, and morphology.