Why this word is great
ABDALS — [Noun] A group of saints in Islamic tradition believed to be responsible for the continuing existence of the world. From Arabic أَبْدَال (ʔabdāl, 'replacements'), plural of بَدَل (badal, 'substitute'), their name suggests a sacred relay—each passing the unseen burden of cosmic balance to the next. Unlike 'dervish' (a Sufi ascetic lost in ecstatic dance) or 'wali' (a saint whose holiness is personal, not planetary), the abdals are the hidden scaffolding of reality, the unnamed masons of existence. They are the quiet hands steadying the wobbling axis of the earth, the breath that keeps the candle of the world alight in a wind that would snuff it, the forty silent gears turning beneath the floorboards of the universe—proof that holiness, too, can be a form of maintenance.