Crossword clues for kasbah
kasbah
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
see casbah.
Wiktionary
n. (alternative spelling of casbah English)
WordNet
n. an older or native quarter of many cities in northern Africa; the quarter in which the citadel is located [syn: casbah]
Wikipedia
A kasbah Arabic قصبة , or in older English casbah, and qasbah or qassabah in India, is a type of medina, Islamic city, or fortress ( citadel).
It was a place for the local leader to live and a defense when a city was under attack. A kasbah has high walls, usually without windows. Sometimes, they were built on hilltops so that they could be more easily defended. Some were placed near the entrance to harbors.
Having a kasbah built was a sign of wealth of some families in the city. When colonization started in 1830, in northern Algeria, there were a great number of kasbahs that lasted for more than 100 years.
The word kasbah may also be used to describe the old part of a city, in which case it has the same meaning as a medina quarter. The Spanish word alcazaba is a cognate naming the equivalent building in Andalusia or Moorish Spain. In Portuguese, it evolved into the word alcáçova. In Catalan, the evolution resulted in "alcassaba". In Turkish and Urdu the word kasaba refers to a settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city; in short, a town. In Serbo-Croatian, kasaba (Cyrillic: касаба) means an undeveloped, provincial small town.
In the al-Baha and Asir provinces of Saudi Arabia and in Yemen, the word " qasaba" usually refers to a single stone or rock tower, either as part of a tower house or a tower isolated on a hilltop or commanding a field.
In India, a qasbah is a small town distinguished by the presence of Muslim families of rank.
Usage examples of "kasbah".
On the day following she stole out of the house into the town and made her way to the Kasbah, and Ali found her in the apartments of the wife of the Basha, who had lit upon her as she seemed to ramble aimlessly through the courtyard from the Treasury to the Hall of Justice, and from there to the gate of the prison.
Nevill Caird went up the Rue Bab-el-Oued, leading to the old town, and so came to the Hotel de la Kasbah, where Victoria Ray was staying.
His true place was that Kasbah, high up at the end of the town, where beggars slept at night in the doorways of shark shops, all Rif rifles from the iron-founding Midlands.
And as the years grew she came to know all places within and around Tetuan, the town of the Moors and the Mellah of the Jews, the Kasbah and the narrow lane leading up to it, the fort on the hill and the river under the town walls, the mountains on either side of the valley, and even some of their rocky gorges.
In the meantime, the other two had sped away to the Kasbah, and before Israel had ridden far into the town, the Kaid--against all usage of his class and country--ran and met him--afoot, slipperless, wearing nothing but selham and tarboosh, out of breath, yet with a mouth full of excuses.
In the dark he found the place, and taking bags in both his hands and hiding them under the folds of his selham, he tried to escape from the Kasbah unseen.
Shoutings for the mkhaznia, infuriated commands to the guards, racings to the stables and the Kasbah yard, unhobbling of horses, stamping and clattering of hoofs, and scurryings through dark corridors of men carrying torches and flares.
Guy - hired at vast expense to turn the lawns of The Bottoms into the Kasbah.
Reuben Maliki, keeper of the poor-box--were seized and cast into the Kasbah for gross and base usury.
THE FALL OF BEN ABOO The roysterers in the Kasbah sat a long half-hour in ignorance of the doom that was impending.
Such, and worse, and of a kind that bears not to be told, was the conversation after supper of the roysterers in the Kasbah.
Hogg had a confused image of the Moorish Empire: dirty men in robes, kasbahs without modern sanitation, heartening smells of things the sun had got at, muezzins, cockfights, shady men in unshaven hiding, the waves slapping naughty naughty at boats full of contraband goods.
Prolonged and hideous tortures awaited her, culminating in her public impalement, nude, upon the walls of the great kasbah at Nine Wells.
The support of the kasbah of the Salt Ubar comes from fees supplied by high salt merchants, the measure of which fees, of course, they include in their wholesale pricings to lesser distributors.
On foot, among our captors, tethered by the neck to saddle rings, bound, we trudged to the larger of the pair of kasbahs, that other than Tarna's.