Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Islamic, "a book," especially the Quran or the Bible, 1885, from Arabic kitab "book," literally "a writing," from Aramaic kethabh "a writing."
Wiktionary
Wikipedia
Kitab , also transcribed as kitaab, kitáb, or kitāb, is the Arabic word for book, from the root K-T-B. The word is also used in the Persian, Hindi, Nepalese, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Punjabi, Urdu as (kitab), while in Assamese (as "kitap"), Swahili (as "kitabu"), Tatar, Kyrgyz and Turkish (as "kitap") languages and in some contexts in Greek ("κιτάπι"). The word is also related to katav, the Hebrew word for reporter. It is part of titles of many Arabic language books. Some prominent examples are:
- Al-Kitab - a reference to itself in Quran, also called "Kitabullah", The book of God. In Indonesian the word refers to the Bible.
- Kitab al-Aghani - The Book of Songs
- Kitab al-Buldan - Book of Lands
- Kitab al-Hiyal - The Book of Ingenious Devices
- Kitab al Majmu - Book of the Sum Total
- Kitab Ash-Shifa bi ta'rif huquq al-Mustafa - Healing by the recognition of the Rights of the Chosen one
- Kitab al-Musiqi al-Kabir - Great Book of Music
- Kitab al-Tabikh - The Book of Dishes
- Kitáb-i-Aqdas - Most Holy Book, the central book of the Bahá'í Faith.
- Kitáb-i-Íqán - Book of Certitude regarded as Bahá'u'lláh's primary theological work.
- Kitab al Khazari - Book of the Khazars, Dialogues between the Khazar King and a religious sage, originally written in Arabic in Medieval Spain, but since translated into Hebrew and English, perhaps incorrectly so. The original Arabic version has been lost, and therefore there is no way to validate the accuracy of the Hebrew translation, which occurred 700 years after the work was originally written in Arabic.
Usage examples of "kitab".
He had brought with him the Kitab of al-Idrisi, and he opened it to the pages showing Acre and its environs.
Even the best of maps, those in the Kitab of al-Idrisi, are liars, and they cannot help being liars.
Some days afterward, when my uncle compared our eastward progress against the maps in the Kitab of al-Idrisi, he announced that we had arrived at a historic place.
So, every day or so, my father and uncle would get out our copy of the Kitab and, only after deliberation and consultation and final agreement, they would inscribe upon it the symbols for mountains and rivers and towns and deserts and other such landmarks.
Alexander had ever penetrated into central Asia, and, according to our Kitab maps, we were now squarely in the center of that largest land mass on earth.
We had now come so far around the world, and into lands so very little known, that our Kitab was no longer of the slightest use to us.
Leng is upon them, their tools are those described in the Kitab al Azif.
But there are more profound points of accord between the Kitab al-Ibar of the Fremen and the teachings of Bible, Ilm, and Fiqh.
Graphemes The ancient Arabic script, a naturally cursive script with up to four different forms for each letter (depending on its position-initial, medial, final, or uncon nected-m a word), has, through millennia of usage been streamlined and at times arbitrarily restructured so that it has come to be an alphabetic script with only one form of a letter per sound unit This latest innovation was attributed to the planetologist Liet-Kynes during his stay on Arrakis with the Fremen tribes Other pnor innovations included the introduction of symbols to represent vowels (ancient Arabic script indicated short vowels only by infrequently used diacritical marks) attributed to Ah Ben Ohasi and later modi fied by the Fremen in the fast copies of their desert survival manual, the Kitab al Ibar The Fremen script in use during die time .
Graphemes The ancient Arabic script, a naturally cursive script with up to four different forms for each letter (depending on its position-initial, medial, final, or uncon nected-m a word), has, through millennia of usage been streamlined and at times arbitrarily restructured so that it has come to be an alphabetic script with only one form of a letter per sound unit This latest innovation was attributed to the planetologist Liet-Kynes during his stay on Arrakis with the Fremen tribes Other pnor innovations included the introduction of symbols to represent vowels (ancient Arabic script indicated short vowels only by infrequently used diacritical marks) attributed to Ah Ben Ohasi and later modi fied by the Fremen in the fast copies of their desert survival manual, the Kitab al Ibar The Fremen script in use during die time of Muad'Dib is shown below Many of the values of .