casbah and katzav

A casbah is a citadel or a fortified quarter of an Arab city. Does it have a cognate in Hebrew? Casbah (sometimes spelled kasbah) entered English from French, which got it from North African Arabic, where kasba meant "fortress." In Hebrew today it is spelled קַסְבָּה . In Arabic, in addition to fort/citadel, kasba can also mean " reed, cane, pipe. " There are two theories as to how the two…