Amber and Misbaha: A Working Glossary

**Misbaha** — the prayer bead strand, the term used across Levantine and Gulf Arabic. **Tasbih** — the same object; the term that travels furthest, used across Türkiye, South Asia, Southeast Asia and in English. **Sebha** — the Egyptian term. **Tespih** — the Turkish and Balkan form. Which word a buyer uses is a reliable indicator of where they are sitting and, usually, of what specification they expect.

**Imam** — the terminal piece at the crown of the strand, usually elongated and turned. **Separator** — a disc or marker dividing the composition, conventionally at the thirds. **Tassel** — the braided cord finish above the imam.

**Natural amber** — fossil resin, cut and polished and nothing else. Not reconstituted, not heat-clarified, not dyed. **Pressed amber** — genuine amber reconstituted from fragments under heat and pressure. A different material, not a fake one, and one that must never be described as natural. **Succinite** — Baltic amber specifically, identifiable by succinic acid content and therefore testable rather than merely assertable.

**Sunspangle** — a disc-shaped internal fracture, usually the result of controlled heating rather than of nature. **Inclusion** — anything trapped in the resin as it flowed; irregular and three-dimensional in natural amber, uniform and flow-aligned in moulded imitations.

**Matched** — meaningless without a stated tolerance and a stated light temperature. Matched by eye under whatever light was available is not the same as matched to ± 0.05 mm judged under 5000 K, and both get called matched.

**Grade 1** — not an industry standard. Every supplier defines it internally, so ask what it means at that supplier rather than assuming it transfers.

**Nominal diameter** — on round and barrel profiles, the width. On a hexagon there are two widths, across the flats and across the corners, and a specification giving only one figure is ambiguous. On a chest, it refers to the block width, and the height is greater.

**Nine-stage polish** — progressive abrasives through to a felt wheel, each stage removing the scratch pattern of the last. **Buffing** — a shortcut that hides tool marks by rounding off geometry; distinguishable because shoulders differ bead to bead. **Concentricity** — how centred the bore is; the quietest failure point in production and the reason a strand will not hang straight.

**Production file** — the record of material batch, profile, cord, furniture, packaging and mark placement for a specification. **Reference strand** — a physical strand retained from a run, against which reorders are matched. Between them they are why a repeat order matches rather than resembles.