Bibliotheca Polyglotta

1 sign, token, mark; 2 miracle; wonder, marvel, prodigy; 3 model, exemplar, paragon, masterpiece (fī of, e.g., of organization, etc.); 4 Koranic verse, ʔāy al-ḏikr) the verses of the Koran; 5 passage (in a book), utterance, saying, word; 6 pl. ʔāyāt… (with foll. genit.) most solemn assurances (of love, of gratitude) – WehrCowan1979.

▪ From protSem *ʔāyat‑ ‘sign, mark (*‑at‑ ‘feminine suffix)’ – Huehnergard2011.

Of very frequent occurrence in the Q, e.g., 2:39, 3:4, 36:33 ‘sign’.

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▪ Jeffery1938: »Later it [sc. ʔāyaẗ] comes to mean a verse of the Qurʔān, and then a verse of a book, but it is doubtful whether it ever means anything more than ‘sign’ in the Qurʔān, though as Muḥammad comes to refer to his preaching as a sign, the word tends to the later meaning, as e.g. in iii, 5, etc. It is noteworthy that in spite of the frequency of its occurrence in the Qurʔān it occurs very seldom in the early Meccan passages.¹ / The struggles of the early Muslim philologers to explain the word are interestingly set forth in LA, xviii, 66 ff. The word has no root in Ar, and is obviously, as von Kremer noted,² a borrowing from Syr or Aram. The Hbr ʔôt (cf. Phoen ʔt), from a verb ʔāwāʰ ‘to sign or mark’, was used quite generally, for signs of the weather (Gen. i: 14; ix: 12), for a military ensign (Numb, ii: 2), for a memorial sign (Josh, iv: 6), and also in a technical religious sense both for the miracles which attest the Divine presence (Ex. viii: 19; Deut. iv: 34; Ps. lxxviii: 43), and for the signs or omens which accompany and testify to the work of the Prophets (1 Sam. x: 7, 9; Ex. iii: 12). / In the Rabbinic writings ʔôt is similarly used, though it there acquires the meaning of a letter of the alphabet, which meaning, indeed, is the only one the Lexicons know for the Aram ʔtʔ.³ / While it is not impossible that the Arabs may have got the word from the Jews, it is more probable that it came to them from the Syr-speaking Christians.⁴ The Syr ʔātā, while being used precisely as the Hbr ʔôt, and translating sēmeîon both in the LXX and N.T., is also used in the sense of argumentum, documentum (PSm, 413), and thus approaches even more closely than ʔôt the Qurʔānic use of the word. / The word occurs in the old poetry, e.g. in Imruʔ al-Qais, lxv, 1 (Ahlwardt, Divans, 160), and so was in use before the time of Muḥammad.«
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1. Not more than nine times in Sūras classed by Nöldeke as early Meccan, though many passages in these are certainly to be placed much later, and one may doubt whether the word occurs at all in really early passages. 2. Ideen, 226 n.; see also Sprenger, Leben, ii, 419 n.; Cheikho, Naṣrāniyya, 181; and Margoliouth, ERE, x, 539. 3. In BiblAram, however, ʔāt means a sign wrought by God; cf. Dan, xxx: 33. 4. Mingana, Syriac Influence, 86. Note also the Mand ʔwtʔ ‘sign’.

▪ (Huehnergard2011:) Engl aya, ayatollah, from Ar ʔāyaẗ ‘sign’.

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ʔYD أيد

√ʔYD

“root”

▪ ʔYD_1 ‘...’ ↗...
▪ ʔYD_2 ‘...’ ↗...
▪ ʔYD_3 ‘...’ ↗...

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘fortification, stronghold, refuge; to bolster, fortify; power, toughness’

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ʔYR أير

√ʔYR

“root”

▪ ʔYR_1 ‘penis’ ↗ʔayr
▪ ʔYR_2 ‘May’ ↗ʔayyārᵘ
▪ ʔYR_3 : see also ↗ʔWR

Other values, now obsolete, include (Freytag1830, Dozy1881, Wahrmund1886, Hava1899):

▪ ^†ʔYR_4 ‘cotton’: ^†ʔīr (Wahrm.)
▪ ^†ʔYR_5 ‘eireh/eyré, blouse worn by waiters, grooms, housemaids etc. in Egypt’: ^†ʔayraẗ (Dozy)
▪ ^†ʔYR_6 ‘air’: ^†ʔiyār
▪ ^†ʔYR_7 ^†ʔayr, var. ʔīr ‘north wind, east wind, hot wind’ (Wahrm.; Hava)
▪ ^†ʔYR_8 ‘aes, orichalcum | brass’: ^†ʔayār (Freytag, Wahrm.)
▪ ^†ʔYR_ ‘…’: ^†ʔyr

▪ [v1] : Although ʔayr looks like an old word for ‘penis’, it has no direct cognates in Sem. Given that Akk ayaru (āru) ‘young man’ may be a loan (with *ʕ > ʔ) from WSem (so von Soden, AHW 25; cf. Ar ↗ʕayyār ‘vagabond, vagrant’, from ↗ʕāra ‘to wander, stray, rove’, Hbr ʕYR ‘to go away, go hither and thither, etc.’), a similar relation to the same ʕayyār is not inconceivable (considered also by the authors of DRS), especially so since the ʕayyārūn, who were »paramilitary chivalric bands that constituted an important element in premodern Islamic society, primarily in the pre-Mongol Middle East (the Mashriq) and the eastern Iranian lands«,¹ were always associated with masculinity. – ? Cf. also ^†ʔār ‘shame’ (for ʕār ‘id.’), see ↗^†ʔWR_3 ?
▪ [v2] : The Levantine word for ‘May’, ʔayyār, is possibly a borrowing into WSem from Akk ayyaru where it (according to von Soden, AHW) may have meant the ‘month of the flowers’ (cf. below, section COGN, DRS items #5 and #6). – Any relation to the notion of ‘light, heat, fire’ (↗ʔWR, esp. Ar ↗ʔuwār)?
▪ [v3] : See ↗ʔWR
▪ ^†[v4] : ^†ʔīr ‘cotton’ is found only in Wahrmund; of obscure provenance (if a valid attestation at all), perh. related to the ‘blouse’ of ^†[v5]?
▪ ^†[v5] : Is the word eireh/eyré (Dozy: ^†ʔayraẗ), attested as the term used for a blouse worn by waiters, grooms, housemaids etc. in Egypt, related to ^†[v4] ʔīr ‘cotton’ (recorded only by Wahrmund)?
▪ ^†[v6] : ^†ʔiyār ‘aura, aër | air’ seems to be borrowed from Grk ἀήρ a͗ḗr ‘air, atmosphere’.
▪ ^†[v7] : Hava1899 suggests that ^†ʔayr ~ ʔīr for ‘north wind, east wind, hot wind’ is a variant of ↗hayr (also hīr, hayyir) ‘id.’. But the reverse may be the case, and both may go back to the same etymon as ^†[v6], namely Grk a͗ḗr. – Cf., however, Freytag1830 where ‘eurus’ also corresponds to Ar ^†ʔayūr ~ ʔawūr, forms that are less likely to be from Grk a͗ḗr but rather from Εὖρος Eûros ‘(God of the) (south)east wind’.
▪ ^†[v8] : of obscure origin (if valid at all).
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1. D. Tor, art. »ʕayyār«, in ³EI.

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▪ DRS 1 (1994) ʔYR-1 Ar ʔayr ‘penis, verge’. -2 Akk ayyar‑ (et āru?) ‘jeune homme’. -3 Ar ʔīr ‘parcelles, brins’. -4 Syr ʔīrā ‘pot, marmite’. -5 Akk ayyar-, iyar- ‘fleur, rosette’, ayyart- ‘corail blanc’. -6 *ʔayyar-: nom de mois (environ ‘mai’) : Akk ayyar-, JudPalAram ʔiyyār, Nab ʔyr, Mnd ayar, Ar ʔayyārᵘ.
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▪ See above, section CONC.
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