The Arabic Language

Qurʾān
are the following:
from Middle Persian (Pahlavi) through Syriac/Aramaic:
zanjabīl
‘well in paradise’ < Syriac 
zangabīl
< Pahlavi 
singab
ēr
‘ginger’
warda
‘rose’ < Aramaic 
wardā
< Avestan 
varǝḏa.
Some words must have been borrowed directly from Middle Persian, such as:
istabraq
‘brocade’ < Pahlavi 
stabr
‘thick (of clothing)’ + suffix 
-ak
jund
‘army’ < Pahlavi 
gund
‘army, troop’
kanz
‘treasure’ < Pahlavi 
ganǰ
‘treasure’
dirham
‘silver coin’ < Pahlavi 
draxm
< Greek 
drachmè
or from Greek/Latin through Syriac/Aramaic:
burj
‘tower’ < Syriac 
būrgā
< Greek 
púrgos
zawj
‘pair, married couple’ < Syriac 
zūgā
‘yoke’, 
bar zūgā
‘husband, wife’ < Greek 
zeũgos
‘yoke’
dīnār
‘gold coin’ < Syriac 
dīnarā
< Greek 
dēnárion
< Latin 
denarius
qaṣr
‘castle’ < Aramaic 
qaṣrā
< Greek 
kástron
< Latin 
castrum
, 
castra
ṣirāṭ
‘path’ < Aramaic 
isṭrātiyā
< Greek 
stráta
< Latin 
strata
yāqūt
‘sapphire’ < Syriac 
yaqūnṭā
< Greek 
huákinthos
‘hyacinth’
qirṭās
‘scroll of paper’ < Syriac 
qarṭīsā
, 
karṭīsā
< Greek 
chartēs.
And, of course, there was a large number of words that came in straight from 
Syriac/Aramaic, such as:
ṣalāt
‘prayer’ < Aramaic 
ṣlōṯā
tīn
‘fig’ < Aramaic 
tīnā
sifr
‘large book’ < Aramaic 
sifrā
masjid
‘place of worship’ < Aramaic/Nabataean 
msgdʾ.
A special category of loanwords is constituted by those words that came in by a 
southern route, from languages such as South Arabian or Ethiopic, for example:
ṣanam
‘idol’ < South Arabian 
ṣnm
, Ṣafāʾitic 
ṣnmt.
The oldest commentaries on the 
Qurʾān
, such as that by Mujāhid (d. 104/722), 
had no qualms in assigning words in the 
Qurʾān
to a foreign origin. Mujāhid stated, 
for instance, that the word 
ṭūr
‘mountain’ came from Syriac, the word 
sijjīl
‘baked 
clay’ from Persian or Nabataean, and the word 
qisṭās
‘balance’ from Greek. In the 
cases mentioned here, he was not that far off, since 
ṭūr
does indeed come from 
Syriac 
ṭūr
, 
sijjīl
from Pahlavi 
sang
‘stone’ + 
gīl
‘clay’, and 
qisṭās
perhaps ultimately 
derives from Greek 
dikastēs
‘judge’, through Syriac 
dīqasṭūs
. Some of the etymolo
-
gies quoted by the commentators may be fanciful, but the important thing is 
that they looked upon the enrichment of the vocabulary as an advantage and as 

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The Development of Classical Arabic 
69
a sign of the superiority of the creative genius evidenced in the 
Qurʾān
. By the 
end of the second century of the Hijra, however, some philologists had started to 
attack the notion that the 
Qurʾān
could contain foreign loanwords, and attempted 
to connect the vocabulary of the 
Qurʾān
with a Bedouin etymology. Thus, for 
instance, ʾAbū ʿUbayda (d. 210/825) says that: ‘the 
Qurʾān
was revealed in clear 
Arabic language, and whosoever claims that the word 
ṭāhā
is Nabataean makes a 
big mistake’ (
nazala l-Qurʾānu bi-lisānin ʿarabiyyin mubīnin fa-man ḏ̣aʿama ʾanna ṭāhā 
bi-n-Nabaṭiyyati fa-qad ʾakbara
) (
Majāz
, I, ed. Sezgin, Cairo, 1954, p. 17). Although 
most Arab lexicographers, such as as-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), continued to assign a 
foreign origin to many Arabic words, the idea of the purity of the Arabic language 
remained the prevalent attitude among some Islamic scholars, and attempts by 
Western scholars to find traces of other languages in the 
Qurʾān
were, and still 
are, vehemently rejected.
The real problem arises in the case of Qurʾānic words that have developed a 
new technical meaning not supported by the semantics of the Arabic root. In such 
cases, the exegetes go out of their way to find a connection. Thus, for instance, 
for the expression 
yawm al-qiyāma
‘the day of resurrection’, the standard explana
-
tion in the commentaries is that it is connected with the root 
q-w-m
‘to stand up’, 
but most likely the Christian Syriac term 
qiyāmeṯā
as a translation of the Greek 
anástasis
‘resurrection’ prompted the semantic extension of the Arabic word. 
Similar examples are those of 
zakāt
‘alms’, 
masjid
‘mosque’, 
ṣuḥuf
‘scriptures’, 
sabt
‘Saturday’, 
sūra
‘portion of the 
Qurʾān
’, and such central notions in the Qurʾānic 
message as 
kitāb
‘book’, 
sāʿa
‘hour’, etc. The term 
ṣuḥuf
‘scriptures’, plural of 
ṣaḥīfa
, 
is connected by the Arabic commentators with a root 
ṣ-ḥ-f
, which occurs only 
as a denominative in the second measure, 
ṣaḥḥafa
, with the meaning of ‘making 
a mistake in reading’. In pre-Islamic poetry, 
ṣaḥīfa
(plural 
ṣaḥāʾif
) is used in the 
sense of ‘page of writing’. The Qurʾānic use of the word in the sense of ‘scriptures’ 
(e.g., 
Q
20/133: 
aṣ-ṣuḥuf al-ʾūlā
‘the first scriptures’) is difficult to explain from the 
meaning of the root, which is why Western commentaries often connect it with 
an Epigraphic South Arabian word 
ṣḥft
or with the common Ethiopic root 
s’-ḥ-f
‘to write’.
In line with the idea of the purity of the language, the semantic extension of 
an existing word was regarded as the most appropriate device for the expansion 
of the lexicon. The model for this procedure was believed to have been given by 
the language of the 
Qurʾān
itself. Since the grammarians analysed many religious 
terms, such as 
ṣalāt
‘prayer’, 
zakāt
‘alms’ and the term 
ʾislām
itself, as old Bedouin 
words which had received a specialised meaning in the religious context, semantic 
extension became an accepted method of creating new terminology. They were 
doubtless right in the sense that part of the religious vocabulary of the 
Qurʾān
is 
the result of an internal development without external influence. A case in point 
is the word 
ʾislām
, which meant in general ‘to surrender oneself’, but came to 
mean ‘to surrender oneself to God, to convert to the new religion brought by the 

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70
The Arabic Language
Prophet’. Besides, even when the new meanings of existing words were calqued 
on cognate words in other languages, their occurrence in the 
Qurʾān
canonised 
the new meaning.
The large-scale influx of new notions and ideas in the early Islamic period 
could not be handled by giving new meanings to existing words alone. In spite of 
the purists’ opposition, many words from other languages were simply taken over, 
either in their original form or with some slight adaptation to Arabic phonology 
or morphology. Loanwords from Persian abound in the domains of pharmacology, 
mineralogy and botany, for instance, in the names of plants: