ṭarab
طَرَب (ṭarab) n.: joy, pleasure, delight
Form II of this root gives the transitive verb طَرَّبَ (ṭarraba), lit. “to delight, to fill with delight … to sing.” The same root also lends itself to the dulcet genitive construct آلَة الطَرَب (ālāt at-ṭarab) lit. “instrument of pleasure, or delight,” – which is to say, a musical instrument.[1]
Odd then, to consider the additional layers of meaning Ibn Manẓūr gives in his 1290 dictionary, Lisān al-ʿArab:
الطَّرَبُ: الفَرَحُ وَالحُزْن ... وقيلَ: الطَّرَبُ خِفَّةٌ تَعْتَرِى عِنْدَ شِدَّةِ الفَرَحِ أَو الحُزْنِ وَالهَمِّ
At-ṭarab: joy and sadness ... it is said: aṭ-ṭarab is the instability that accompanies strong joy or sadness and anxiety.[2]
The pedantic and moralizing Arabist Edward Lane noted the same in his Lexicon, defining ṭarab as “a lively emotion, or excitement, agitation, or unsteadiness ... [of the heart or mind,] by reason of joy or grief.” The translator of a whimsical but excessively Victorian and prudish edition of the Arabian Nights, Lane approvingly cited an 18th-century source in observing, “the vulgar apply it [ṭarab] peculiarly to joy.” Ours, it seems, are vulgar times, befitting vulgar, truncated expression.[3]
In contemporary Egyptian use, ṭarab loses its second short vowel but gains yet another meaning, one that is appropriately gastronomical and farcical. Here, ṭarb refers to a style of kofta (كفتى, i.e. skewered patties of minced lamb) made succulent by the strips of fat (ṭarb) pressed into it prior to grilling.
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