Tarikh (Arabic: تاريخ, romanized: Tārīkh) is an Arabic word meaning "date, chronology, era", whence by extension "annals, history, historiography". It is also used in Persian, Urdu, Bengali and the Turkic languages. It is found in the title of many historical works. Prior to the 19th century, the word referred strictly to writing of or knowledge about history, but in modern Arabic it is, like the English word "history", equivocal and may refer either to past events themselves or their representations.
The word taʾrīkh is not of Arabic origin and this was recognized by Arabic philologists already in the Middle Ages. The derivation they proposed—that the participle muʾarrakh, "dated", comes from the Persian māh-rōz, "month-day"—is incorrect. Modern lexicographers have proposed an unattested Old South Arabian etymon for the plural tawārīkh, "datings", from the Semitic root for "moon, month". The Ge'ez term tārīk, "era, history, chronicle", has occasionally been proposed as the root of the Arabic term, but in fact is derived from it.
