لاژورد

Lapis lazuli — the deep-blue semi-precious stone used in pigments, jewelry, and decoration since prehistory — takes its name from medieval Latin lapis lazuli (stone of lāzhward), where lapis is the Latin word for stone and lazuli is the genitive form of lazulum, itself a Latinized version of the Arabic lāzaward, which comes directly from the Persian lāzhward. Lāzhward was the name of a region in present-day northeastern Afghanistan — near the town of Sar-e Sang in Badakhshan Province — where the only significant ancient and medieval source of lapis lazuli existed. The stone was therefore named for its place of origin: to say 'lapis lazuli' was to say 'the stone from Lāzhward,' a remarkably literal and geographical etymology for something so beautiful.

The mines of Badakhshan are among the oldest continuously worked mines in human history. Lapis lazuli from this single valley has been found in ancient Egyptian royal tombs (Tutankhamun's death mask contains it), Mesopotamian jewelry from Ur (c. 2500 BCE), Indus Valley burial sites, and Minoan Crete. The Silk Road trade in lapis lazuli is one of the most ancient documented commodity trades in the world — a single source, Badakhshan, supplying the luxury markets of Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, and eventually medieval Europe for over five thousand years. The stone's extraordinary blue — the blue of heaven and deep water — made it the most prized blue mineral in the ancient world.

In medieval European painting, lapis lazuli was ground into the pigment ultramarine (from Latin ultramarinus, 'beyond the sea,' named for its long trade route). Ultramarine was the most expensive pigment available — more costly than gold — and was used exclusively for the most sacred subjects: the Virgin Mary's robe, icon backgrounds, the garments of divine figures. Patrons who commissioned paintings specified that the Virgin's robe must be painted with 'genuine ultramarine' rather than the cheaper substitute azurite. The Persian place-name lāzhward thus entered the vocabulary of European art through one of the most expensive trade routes in the medieval world — and through its Arabic form lāzaward, also gave European languages the color word 'azure,' which is lapis lazuli's color translated into a weather metaphor.