“Father of,” in Arabic

To solve the mystery of the crossword clue ‘Father of, in Arabic’, I had to think creatively and draw upon my knowledge of Arabic language and culture. My initial instinct was to consider the Arabic word for ‘father‘, which is ‘ab‘ or ‘aba‘. However, the clue specified ‘father of‘, which led me to think about how Arabic uses the prefix ‘abu‘ to indicate a father of a specific person or thing. For example, ‘Abu Bakr‘ was the father of Aisha, one of Mohammed’s wives. I also knew that ‘abu‘ can be used informally to mean ‘owner of‘ or ‘father of‘ a particular trait or characteristic, such as ‘abu shagara‘ (father of a tree) or ‘abu tamara‘ (father of dates). These insights helped me to confidently fill in the answer ‘ABU‘ in the crossword puzzle, and I was thrilled to have cracked the code through my knowledge of Arabic language and culture as a detective.