almaçurn.

Etymology: < Old French almaçur Saracen prince, emir (c1100 in the Chanson de Roland, e.g. in the passages translated in quots. 1880, 1919; Middle French amachour (a1400)), ultimately < Arabic al-manṣūr ( < al the + manṣūr aided (by God), victorious, triumphant, passive participle of naṣara to help, aid, assist, to make (a person) victorious), title of several Arab rulers (see below); the Arabic word may perhaps have entered French via Spanish †Almançor (second half of the 11th cent.; now Almanzor), name given by Christian chroniclers to the late 10th-cent. de facto ruler of Muslim al-Andalus (see below) and other Muslim rulers.Arabic al-manṣūr is first attested as a title of the second Abbasid caliph, ʿAbū Jaʿfar ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī (a713–775, caliph from 754), and subsequently of two other caliphs and several rulers. To medieval Europeans, the best-known bearer of the title was ʿAbū Āmir Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbū ʿĀmir al-Maʿāfirī (938–1002), the de facto ruler of Muslim al-Andalus, whose full title was al-manṣūr bi-llāh, literally ’the Victorious One in God’; he became famous and feared throughout Western Christendom as a result of his military campaigns. The use as a common noun is an Old French semantic development not paralleled in either Spanish or Arabic.