▪ Jeffery1938: »It is found only in the pl.
ḫiyām in an early Meccan description of Paradise, where we are told that the Houries are
maqṣūrāt fī ‘l-ḫiyām ‘kept close in pavilions’. – The word is obviously not Ar, and Fraenkel,
Fremdw, 30, though admitting that he was not certain of its origin, suggested that it came to the Arabs from Abyssinia.
1
Eth [Gz]
ḫaymat means
‘tentorium’,
‘tabernaculum’ (Dillmann,
Lex, 610), and translates both the Hbr אהל and Grk
skēnḗ. Vollers, however, in
ZDMG, 1, 631, is not willing to accept this theory of Abyssinian derivation,
2
and thinks we must look to Persia or NAfrica for its origin. The Pers
ḫaymat,
ḫiyam and
ḫiyām, however, are direct borrowings from the Ar
3
and not formations from the root √
ḪMY meaning ‘curvature’. – We find the word not infrequently in the early poetry, and so it must have been an early borrowing, probably from the same source as the Eth
ḫaymat.«
▪ Orel&Stolbova1994#2058: The common Sem ancestor is to be reconstructed as *ḫaym‑ ‘tent; hut, cabin’. The cognates in Berb, Eg, and ECh make the authors suggest a common etymon in AfrAs *q̇am‑ / *q̇ayam‑ ‘tent, house’.