LatwPIAT posted:

Regarding the Ahl-i-Batin, one of my friends offered the following observation:

quote:

ahl-i-batin supposedly translates to 'the subtle ones' except 'the' and 'subtle' both aren't anywhere in the word. It's also based off of an invalid trilateral root, and batin likely translates to either 'many settlements' or 'incredibly fat'. Making it either 'people of many settlements' (Which could be a cool pan-Islamic unification Tradition) or 'the incredibly fat people'. When, of course, there are pre-existing ahl-al terms that would work fine for the ahl-i-batin. The ahl-al-kitab are 'the people of the book' and works well for how the batin are described, the ahl-al-bait are the people of the prophet's household. The Subtle Ones...might be, like, Al-Makur (The Crafty) or something.