▪ Cheung2017rev: prob. a direct borrowing from early nPers gunāh ‘id.’. For details, see below, section DISC. ▪ Following Jeffery1938 (see below, section DISC), ǧunāḥ ‘misdemeanor; sin’ is usually regarded as a borrowing from Pers gonāh. If from Pers, the emphatisation -h > -ḥ may have arisen due to possible association with ↗ǧanaḥa; after all, the value ‘misdemeanor; sin’ can easily be imagined as fig. use of ‘to incline, lean towards’ > ‘to incline to the wrong side, deviate from the right path’. Cf., however, the fact that DRS classifies the item neither as a borrowing nor as belonging to ‘wing’ etc., but as forming a distinct group together with some Syr and EthSem items. ▪ …
▪ eC7 (‘sin, wrong, crime’) Q 5:93, 33:55:5, 51, 55, etc. (25 occurrences), e.g.,1 (sin, crime; blame, censure, discordance) Q 4:128 wa-ʔini mraʔaẗun ḫāfat min baʕli-hā nušūzan ʔaw ʔiʕrāḍan fa-lā ǧunāḥa ʕalay-himā ʔan yuṣliḥā bayna-humā ṣulḥan ‘and if a-woman experiences discordance or alienation from her husband, there is no blame on them if they agree between them on a settlement’; 2 (jur., financial obligations) Q 2:236 lā ǧunāḥa ʕalay-kum ʔin ṭallaqtumu n-nisāʔa mā lam tamassū-hunna ʔaw tafriḍū la-hunna farīḍaẗan ‘there are no financial obligations on you if you divorce women unless you have touched them or have appointed a dowry for them’ ▪ ...
▪ DRS 3 (1993) #GNḤ-1 .... -2 [with Engl accord. to Leslau2006 (CDG)] Akk ganāḫu ‘to have a fit of coughing’, postBiblHbr gānaḥ ‘to groan, moan’, Syr gᵊnaḥ ‘s’étonner, admirer’, gūnḥā ‘stupeur, crainte, calamité’, Ar ǧunāḥ ‘méfait, faute’; reproche | reproach, remonstrance’, Gz ganḥa ‘être orgueilleux et violent | to behave impetuously, arrogantly, get angry, speak vehemently, reprimand’, gənāḥ ‘orgueil, violence | vehemence, haughtiness, rebuke, reprimand, scolding’, Te gänḥä ‘voir, observer; négliger’, gənḥät ‘regard, observation’, perh. Te təganḥa ‘to show o.s. > be proud > behave impetously’, Tña gänḥe ‘faire des reproches, améliorer | to get angry, make reproaches’. – ?Cf. also 3 Ar ǧanāḥ ‘aile, bord, côté’, ǧinḥ ‘bord, côté’, ǧunḥ ‘crépuscule’, ǧanaḥa ‘(se) pencher, s’incliner, décliner’, Jib génaḥ ‘aile’, Mhr agonəḥ ‘voler’, Soq ganḥ ‘côté’? ▪ Cf. perh. also ↗ǧinḥ. ▪ ...
▪ Jeffery1938: »A favourite Madina word, occuring only in late passages. The favourite phrase is lā ǧunāḥᵃ ʕalà, and it is used as a technical term in Muḥammad’s religious legislation.1
– The Lexicons give no satisfactory explanation of the word, though they apparently treat it as a genuine Ar formation. As Hübschmann showed in 1895 in his Persische Studien, 162, 212, it is the Pers gunāh,2
through the Pazend gunāh (Shikand, Glossary, 247) from Phlv vinās,3
a ‘crime’ or ‘sin’ (as is obvious from the Arm vnas = [Grk] ʰamártēma in the old Bible translation),4
and the fact that venāh still occurs in one of the Pers dialects as a direct descendant from the Phlv vinās,5
which is related to Skr vināša and is quite a good Indo-European word. In Phlv the word is used technically just as in the Qurʔān, and we find such combinations as avinās ‘sinless’ (PPGl, 77); vināskārīh ‘sinfulness, iniquity’ (West, Glossary, 248); and vināskār ‘a criminal, sinner’ (PPGl, 225).6
– The word was borrowed in the pre-Islamic period and occurs in the old poetry, e.g., in the Muʕallaqa of al-Ḥārith, 70, etc., and was doubtless adopted directly into Arabic from the spoken Persian of the period, for the word is not found in Syriac.« ▪ According to Nişanyan_1Jul2021, Tu günah ‘crime, guilt’ too is based on Pers gunāh ‘guilt’ < mPers vināh or vinās ‘id.’ < oPers vi-nath ‘damage’ (with protIran prefix vi ). Syr gunāyā ‘guilt, crime’ < oPers; cf. Ar ↗ǧināyaẗ (> Tu cinayet). Arm vnas ‘damage’ < mPers ‘damage’. mPers vināskār > Arm vnasagar = Pers gunahkār > Tu günahkâr ‘guilty’ ▪ ...
▪ Not from Ar ǧunāḥ but prob. from the same source is Tu günah: 1303 [Codex Cumanicus] Lat culpa – Pers guna – Tu günah yazuk | Lat culpabilis – Pers guna kar – Tu yazuklamiş günahkâr. | 1317 [Gülşehri, Manṭıḳu'ṭ-Ṭayr] biz perişānuz Ġanī Perverdigār / biz günehkāruz Ġafūr Âmürzigār. | 1330 [Aşık Paşa, Ġarīb-nāme] yavuz işden ḥāṣıl oldı çok günāh – Nişanyan_1Jul2021 ▪ ...
►lā ǧunāḥᵃ ʕalay-hi ʔin ..., expr., it won’t be held against him if he ... ; it won't do any harm if he ... ►ǧunḥaẗ, pl. ǧunaḥ, n.f., misdemeanor (jur., less than a felony, ǧināyaẗ, and more than an infraction, ↗muḫālafaẗ) For other values attached to the root, cf. ↗ǧanaḥa, ↗ǧinḥ, ↗ǧunḥ, ↗ǧanāḥ, and ↗ǧāniḥaẗ, as well as, for the whole picture, root entry ↗ǦNḤ.