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Re: Al-Shamardal (after some research)
Since I know neither the language, nor the script, but I know a very little about the general structure of both of these, and using unicode tables, I tried googling again.I think the word شمردل is pronounced shamardal and according to an Arabic English dictionary http://tinyurl.com/66cfxy (pg 555 second column top; remember to get to increasing page numbers by going up) it means long, swift, fine, handsome. Looking at related words, the root شمر (sheen-meem-reh) seems to be the root, but that is as far as I got before I had to stop playing around.שמר (shin-mem-resh) in Hebrew seems to mean to put a hedge around, protect, or watch. http://tinyurl.com/67mx7u pg. 174 says shamar in Persian is a river. So, there I have now poured out all my confusion ...
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Well, I'm as confused as you are. Mostly because my very extensive dictionary do not at all include shamardal. It is however a dictionary over Modern Standard Arabic. Maybe shamardal is not "modern"...
I agree with you that the root should be sheen-meem-reh but that do not explain lam-dal, wich to me is not a known suffix. Is this one of the few exceptions? However, it seems like you solved the mystery around shamardal. It most likely means handsome - Al-Shamardal should therefore mean The Handsome. Thank you for you're input on my posts, I really appreciate it.

This message was edited 5/20/2008, 2:44 AM

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Thanks for the kind words.The dictionary I linked to is Arabic English dictionary by F. Steinglass (http://books.google.com/books?id=3JXQh09i2JwC) which was published in 2005. The first sentence of the preface (http://tinyurl.com/42z9v8) says it is for ordinary readers who want to read texts of `wider etymological range', so may be I chanced upon a good dictionary.
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