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     Al Zulej

 

For reasons of appeared mistakes, originated for the world-wide situation of our days, we saw for this way to explain the word Zulej.
When we thought about a name, we wanted that it identified the activity of the company: Ceramics and Tiles...

From there we go to the historical and cultural research of all involving of the term tile that is part of the Portuguese history as of the majority of the Occidental countries.



The origin of the term raises polemics between the historians, however, in a point they seem to agree:

The substantive Tile - Azulejo - would have had Persian origin, of Mesopotamian root, in the adjective Lazurd (blue), that it describes a semiprecious rock, from strong color and already then known and used - the Lápis-lazúli.

Of the adjective Lazurd, that it passed the Zul, derived the verbal form Zulej that defines "one object polishing slippery and shining".

Of Zulej it was changed, in the North of Africa in Zulij. The invasions had been given however. And theses, in its territorial reach, had been coming across with the Latin mosaics - as tessere - that much had impressed them and to which they had started to call Zulij.

It was of Zulij that comes the substantive Azzelij that, for phonetic comfort, would have of if pronouncing Az'lij or Az-zullaiju.

It is already this form that we find in the Muslim Iberian Peninsula until, finally in century XIII, it appears the term Tile - Azulejo in Portuguese - in its definitive form.