The story
- Arabic · borrowed fromأَبَابِيل“tiny birds”
- English todayAbabil
From Arabic أَبَابِيل (ʔabābīl, “tiny birds”), described in the Qur'an as dropping red clay bricks on the army of elephants, sent by the king of Yemen to attack the city of Mecca, in the year (571 AD) when the prophet Muhammad was born.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.