Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Several etymologies have been suggested for zāra ‘to visit’: (a) from an original *‘to turn aside’ (a visitor being regarded as s.o. who leaves his regular path and ‘turns aside’ in order to see s.o.), (b) from ↗zawr ‘upper part of the chest’ (‘to visit’ < *‘to meet s.o. with one’s chest, repair to the direction of s.o.’s chest’), (c) from *‘to be an outsider; to be strange, foreign’, (d) the result of an overlapping of reflexes of WSem *‑zūr‑ ‘to visit’ (< ‘to look at, examine’, or ‘to watch, spy’) and Sem *zar‑ ‘foreign(er), enemy’ (> Ar zāʔir ‘visitor, pilgrim’, interpreted as a PA of zāra ‘to visit’ although deriving from Sem *√ZʔR / *√ZWR and originally meaning ‘foreign, hostile’, (e) the result of a blurring of two originally distinct notions, namely ‘to visit a person’ and ‘to visit the tomb of a revered person’. – For details see DISC below.

▪ eC7 zāra (to visit, come to) Q 102:1-2 ʔalhā-kum-u ’l-takāṯuru ḥattà zurtum-u ’l-maqābira ‘striving for more distracts you until you die [lit., visit the graves]’

▪ DRS 8 (1999)#ZW/YR-1 (a) Akk zāru ‘tordre, être tordu’, Hbr JP zār ‘s’écarter de’, zawwēr ‘rouler’, Ar zawira ‘être penché, courbé; aller en biais’, (b) zāra ‘mentir, accuser faussement’, zawwara ‘altérer, falsifier, défigurer, embellir, orner’, zūr ‘mensonge vanité’, (c) zuraẗ ‘fois’, S Ar zāra ‘quelquefois’, Syr zawar ‘regarder de travers’, Gz Te Arg zora, Tña Amh Gur zorä, Gaf zärä ‘tourner, aller autour’, Gz zawwara ‘durer, subsister’; Amh zäwärwärra ‘vagabond; tortueux (chemin)’, zəwərwər ‘en vrille’, žort ‘hérisson’. – (d)? Akk zēru ‘ne pas aimer, haïr, éviter; abandonner’, zayyār ‘ennemi’, Hbr zār, Phoen oYa zr ‘étranger, d’autrui’, TargAram zār ‘loger chez qn’. – (e) Ar zīr ‘qui est en colère’; (f) zāra ‘visiter (un lieu saint)’, MġrAr zār ‘rendre visite’; zyāra ‘visite’; Qat štzr ‘tenter de visiter’, Mhr Jib Ḥrs zōr ‘visiter’, Te Amh Gur zäyyärä ‘visiter, aller en pèlerinage’, Te təzäyyärä ‘être fatigué, épuisé’. – (g) Ar zawr : ombre que l’on voit dans le sommeil.
▪ Zammit2002: Hbr zūr ‘to be a stranger’, Phoen zr ‘strange, other’, oAram zr ‘stranger, foreigner, outsider’, Aram zūr ‘to enter as a guest, lodge’, Ar zāra ‘to visit’ (< *al-mayl wa’l-ʕudūl), SAr z(w)r ‘to visit’, Gz zōra ‘vertigine laborare’, zawr ‘gyrus, orbis, circulus’.

▪ According to ClassAr lexicographers, zāra ‘to (pay) visit, call on’ as well as ↗zūr_1 ‘lie, untruth, falsehood’ (DRS #ZW/YR-1b) are based on an original meaning of the root of ‘to turn aside’ (DRS #ZW/YR-1a), represented in MSA in the items treated s.v. ↗zawar ‘inclination, obliqueness; squint’ (ĭzwarra, vb. IX., ‘to turn aside’; ʔazwarᵘ, adj., ‘inclined, slanting, oblique; crooked, curved; squint-eyed, cross-eyed’).
▪ Others would derive it from ↗zawr ‘upper part of the chest’, interpreting ‘to visit’ as *‘to meet s.o. with one’s zawr (chest, bosom)’ or as *‘to repair to s.o.’s zawr ’ (i.e., in a fig. sense, the ‘direction of a person to whom one repairs’ – Lane).
▪ Kogan2015: 552 (#23) thinks that Ar zāra ‘to visit’ and closely related values in SSem langs¹ perhaps belong together with Akk zêru ‘to dislike, hate, avoid’ etc. (DRS #ZW/YR-1d), a semantic complex the basic meaning of which is ‘to be an outsider; to be strange, foreign’ (cf. also SamAram zr ‘strange, other’).
▪ Dolgopolsky2012#2673/74 thinks (but also has some doubts) that the semantics of Ar zāra ‘to visit’ may be the result of a flowing together and overlapping of two originally distinct values, namely (a) a WSem *-zūr- ‘to visit’ (< AfrAs < Nostr *z̍UR˹i˺/ ?*z̍Uŕ˹i˺ ‘to look at, examine’, or *žUR˹i˺ ‘to watch, to spy’), which gave Ar zāra in the sense of ‘to visit a holy place (e.g., the tomb of a saint) or a person whom one wants to pay respect to’ (as well as the SSem cognates² ), and (b) a Sem *zar- ‘foreign(er), enemy’ (< AfrAs < Nostr *z̍oR˅ ‘foreign, hostile’), whence the Sem vb. root *√ZʔR or *√ZWR ‘to be foreign, hostile’³ that not only gave Akk zêru ~ zeʔāru ‘to dislike, hate, avoid’, zāʔiru ~ zēʔiru ~ zêru ‘hostile’ (√ZʔR) etc.,⁴ but also Ar zāʔir ‘visitor, pilgrim’, interpreted as a PA of zāra ‘to visit’ although deriving from Sem *√ZʔR / *√ZWR and originally meaning ‘foreign, hostile’. – Cf. Kogan’s idea, see preceding paragraph.
▪ DRS mentions that in the MġrAr Jewish dialects a distinction is made between zwāraẗ ‘visit to a person’ and zyāraẗ ‘visit to the tomb of a revered person’. The arrangement within the entry and the values given to the Ar forms suggest that the latter value may be the more original one. – If this reflects an earlier, more widespread distinction, it could serve as an argument supporting Dolgopolsky’s idea of the confluence and overlapping, in MSA zāra, of two originally distinct themes.
▪ Apparently from zāra ‘to (pay) visit, call on’ is also ↗zīr_3 ‘ladies’ man, philanderer’, according to Lane iii (1867) so called because of his frequent visits to women.
▪ Perh. also the obsol. ^†zawr ‘phantom in sleep’ (DRS #ZW/YR-1g) should be related to zāra, as *‘s.th. that visits you while you are asleep, in a dream’.
▪ Etymologies deriving ↗zār ‘zar ceremony’ from zāra ‘to visit’ »seem fantastic, although current in Arab milieux« – art. »zār« (A. Rouaud, T. Battain), in EI². The word seems to have come into Ar, together with the ritual, from EAfrica, via EthSem, ultimately from a Cush milieu.

1. Qat s¹t -zr ‘to ask to visit’ (LIQ 59), Gz zora ‘to go around’ (CDG 646), Te zäwärä ‘to go around, to circulate’ (WTS 502), Tña zorä ‘to go about, to wander around’ (TED 2009), Amh zorä ‘to go around, to roam, not to be able to remain in the same place’ (AED 1664), Gog zorä ‘to go around’ (EDG 714, with cognates in other Gur). 2. D. mentions Qtb št-zr ‘tenter de visiter’, Te Amh zäyyärä ‘visiter, aller en pélérinage’, Mhr zōr ‘to visit a saint’s tomb’, ‘to visit (s.o.)’, E/CJib zɔr ‘to visit’, ? SamAram zrw ‘idolatry’. 3. »with insertion of an additional cons. in the root-medial position due to requirements of the Sem verbal morphology and on the analogy of triconsonantic verbs«. 4. Dolgopolsky lists also BiblHbr zār ‘strange, foreign(er), non-Israelite’ (deriv. PP Š-stem mûzār ‘estranged’ > nHbr mûzār ‘strange, queer’), Phoen zr ‘strange, other’, oAram zr ‘foreigner’, Yd zr ‘stranger’.

▪ Tu ziyāret (1069, Kutadgu Bilig), from Ar ziyāraẗ – Nişanyan_03Apr2015. – Tu mezar (1557 Seydi Ali Reis, Mirʔātü’l-Memālīk), from Ar mazār – Nişanyan_09Apr2014.

► ʔazāra, vb. IV, to induce s.o. to visit (a place): Š-stem, caus.
► tazāwara, vb. VI, to exchange visits: tL-stem, reciproque.
► ĭstazāra, vb. X, to desire s.o.’s (DO) visit: Št-stem, requestative.

► zīr, pl. ʔazyār, n., ladies’ man, philanderer: according to Lane iii (1867): 1269, »so called because of his frequent visits to them [sc., women]«.
► zawraẗ, pl. ‑āt, n.f., visit, call: n.vic.
► ^BP#490 ziyāraẗ, pl. ‑āt, n.f., 1 visit; 2 call (social, of a doctor); 3 (ir.) visit to holy places, pilgrimage: vn. I | ~ ḫāṭifaẗ, n.f., lightning visit, quick visit.
► mazār, pl. ‑āt, n., 1 place which one visits; 2 shrine, sanctuary: n.loc.
► mazūr, adj., visited: PP I.
► ^BP#2123 zāʔir, pl. ‑ūn, zuwwār, n.; zāʔiraẗ, pl. ‑āt, zuwwar, n.f., visitor, caller, guest: traditionally seen as PA I from zāra ‘to visit’; cf. however Dolgopolsky2012#2673-74 where Ar zāʔir ‘visitor’ and zāra ‘to visit’ are thought to perh. go back to different origins: zāʔir < Sem *zar‑ ‘foreign(er), enemy’ < Nostr *z̍oRV ‘foreign, hostile’; zāra < WSem *-zūr‑ ‘to visit’ < Nostr *z̍UR˹i˺ ‘to look at, examine’.
► muzawwir, pl. ‑ūn, n., 1 ↗zūr_1. – 2 pilgrim guide: PA II, D-stem, quasi-caus. (*‘making visit’).

For other values of the root, cf. ↗zawr, ↗zīr, ↗zūr, ↗zawar, and (for the general picture) ↗ZWR. – Cf. also ↗ZYR.

Permanent link

http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=ctext&uid=d8cd7600-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067

Choose languages

Choose images, etc.

Choose languages

Choose display