c. 1150.—"Tanah (miswritten Banah) est une jolie ville située sur un grand golfe.... Dans les montagnes environnantes croissent le ... kana et le ... tabāshīr ... Quant au tébachir, on le falsifie en le mélangeant avec de la cendre d'ivoire; mais le veritable est celui qu'on extrait des racines du roseau dit ... al Sharkí."—Edrisi, i. 179.
1563.—"And much less are the roots of the cane tabaxer; so that according to both the translations Avicena is wrong; and Averrois says that it is charcoal from burning the canes of India, whence it appears that he never saw it, since he calls such a white substance charcoal."—Garcia, f. 195v.
c. 1570.—"Il Spodio si congela d'acqua in alcune canne, e io n'ho trouato assai nel Pegù quando faceuo fabricar la mia casa."—Ces. Federici, in Ramusio, iii. 397.
1578.—"The Spodium or Tabaxir of the Persians ... was not known to the Greeks."—Acosta, 295.
c. 1580.—"Spodium Tabaxir vocant, quo nomine vulgus pharmacopoeorum Spodium factitium, quippe metallicum, intelligunt. At eruditiores viri eo nomine lacrymam quandam, ex caudice arboris procerae in India nascentis, albicantem, odoratam, facultatis refrigeratoriae, et cor maxime roborantis itidem intelligunt."—Prosper Alpinus, Rerum Ægyptiarum, Lib. III. vii.
1598.—"... these Mambus have a certain Matter within them, which is (as it were) the pith of it ... the Indians call it Sacar Mambu, which is as much as to say, as Sugar of Mambu, and is a very deep Medicinable thing much esteemed, and much sought for by the Arabians, Persians, and Moores, that call it Tabaxiir."—Linschoten, p. 104; [Hak. Soc. ii. 56].
1837.—"Allied to these in a botanical point of view is Saccharum officinarum, which has needlessly been supposed not to have yielded saccharum, or the substance known by this name to the ancients; the same authors conjecturing this to be Tabasheer.... Considering that this substance is pure silex, it is not likely to have been arranged with the honeys and described under the head of περι Σακχαρον μελιτον."—Royle on the Ant. of Hindoo Medicine, p. 83. This confirms the views expressed in the article [SUGAR].
1854.—"In the cavity of these cylinders water is sometimes secreted, or, less commonly, an opaque white substance, becoming opaline when wetted, consisting of a flinty secretion, of which the plant divests itself, called Tabasheer, concerning the optical properties of which Sir David Brewster has made some curious discoveries."—Engl. Cycl. Nat. Hist. Section, article Bamboo.
TABBY, s. Not Anglo-Indian. A kind of watered silk stuff; Sp. and Port. tabi, Ital. tabino, Fr. tabis, from Ar. 'attābī, the name said to have been given to such stuffs from their being manufactured in early times in a quarter of Baghdad called al-'attābīya; and this derived its name from a prince of the 'Omaiyad family called 'Attāb. [See Burton, Ar. Nights, ii. 371.]
12th cent.—"The 'Attābīya ... here are made the stuffs, called 'Attābīya, which are silks and cottons of divers colours."—Ibn Jubair, p. 227.