π About Tarek
Tarek is an Arabic variant of Tariq ('one who knocks at night; the morning star that pierces darkness'), the name of the 86th Quranic surah (Al-Tariq, 'The Night-Comer'); its most consequential bearer is Tariq ibn Ziyad, whose 711 AD conquest of the Iberian Peninsula created Al-Andalus and gave his name to Gibraltar (from Arabic Jabal al-TΔriq, 'Mountain of Tariq').
π Details
- OriginArabic
- Genderβ Male
- MeaningVariant of Tariq. Morning star, he who knocks at the door
π Variants & Related Names
β Famous People
- Tariq ibn Ziyad β Berber-born Umayyad military commander (c. 670β720 AD), who led the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 AD; crossing the strait from North Africa with approximately 7,000 troops, he defeated the Visigothic king Roderic at the Battle of Guadalete and initiated the Islamic civilisation of Al-Andalus, which lasted nearly eight centuries and produced some of the greatest achievements in medicine, mathematics, philosophy, and architecture in the medieval world; the Rock of Gibraltar (Jabal al-TΔriq, 'Mountain of Tariq') bears his name.
- Al-Tariq (Surah 86 of the Quran) β The 86th chapter of the Quran, meaning 'The Night-Comer' or 'The Morning Star'; it begins with the oath 'By the sky and the night-comer β what is the night-comer? It is the piercing star'; Islamic exegesis identifies the tariq as a brilliant star that appears in the deep night, used as a metaphor for the divine word that pierces the darkness of ignorance; the surah's name gives Tarek/Tariq its deepest Quranic resonance.
- Tariq Ali β British-Pakistani writer, journalist, and filmmaker (born 1943), one of the most prominent left-wing public intellectuals of the late 20th and early 21st centuries; a leading figure in the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s; author of numerous books on politics, history, and Islam including The Clash of Fundamentalisms (2002) and The Duel (2008); his name Tariq belongs to the Pakistani and British-Pakistani tradition of Arabic naming.
- Gibraltar β Jabal al-TΔriq β The name Gibraltar is the most enduring monument to Tariq ibn Ziyad: derived from the Arabic Jabal al-TΔriq ('Mountain of Tariq'), it has been in continuous use since 711 AD when the general crossed the strait and made the great rock his base of operations; the Arabic name of this strategic promontory persisted through the Spanish Reconquista, the British occupation (from 1704), and into the present day β making Tarek/Tariq one of the very few personal names to be permanently embedded in a major European geographical landmark.