Tarikh is an Arabic word meaning "date, chronology, era", whence by extension "annals, history, historiography". It is also used in Persian, Urdu, Bengali and the Turkic languages. It is found in the title of many historical works. Prior to the 19th century, the word referred strictly to writing of or knowledge about history, but in modern Arabic it is, like the English word "history", equivocal and may refer either to past events themselves or their representations.