Azarak
Azarak is an automobile company from Hama. It builds, designs, repairs and assembles a range of industrial and commercial automobiles. It was founded by Salamu Rashidu in 1970 in the town of Wawadu in Hama as a auto body repair shop. It gradually expanded, with stores being built around the country. It was only under Salamu Rashidu's grandson, then CEO Muhammadu Rashidu, that the company began manufacturing car parts, in 1980. It began car assembly on behalf of foreign companies such as Royal Redrugus in 1990. It began manufacturing its own automobiles in 2000.
Etymology
The company is formally a publically trade limited liability company under Hamanian company law. As such its long name is the "Azarak Group Ltd". The name is Azarak is derived from the word azaraku in the Hamanese language which means "a precious stone", which is derived from the Arabic language word azraq.
Salamu Rashidu had named the company after Azarak from the poem Li di tabu hai sa di chu (These Mountains are not Pebbles) by Yeshu Wawallahu. Mr Rashidu was drawn to the "galloping" metre that the port used in the poem which was achieved by removed the last vowel of all the words (in Hamanese all words must end with a vowel that indicates their part of speech). This totally changed the phonetic morphology of the words. One of these words was azarak instead of azaraku. He was so enraptured by this word that he named his autonomy shop after it.
