▪ Jeffery1938, 162: »In the Qurʔān it is used both of a road, and in the technical religious sense of ‘The Way’ (cf. Acts ix, 2), i.e.
sabīl Allāh. The Muslim authorities take it as genuine Arabic, and Sprenger,
Leben, ii, 66, agrees with them. It is somewhat difficult, however, to derive it from √SBL as even Rāġib,
Mufradāt, 221, seems to feel, and the word is clearly a borrowing from the Syr
šᵊḇīlā.
1
As a matter of fact Hbr שׁביל and Aram שׁבילא mean both ‘road’ or ‘way of life’, precisely as the Syr
šəḇīlā, but it is the Syr word which had the widest use and was borrowed into Arm as
šawił,
2
and so is the more likely origin. It occurs in the old poetry, e.g. in Nābigha v, 18 (Ahlwardt,
Divans, p. 6), and thus must have been an early borrowing.«
▪
EALL (Retsö, »Aramaic/Syriac Loanwords«
3
): loaned from Syr
šḇīl.ā ‘way, path’.
▪ How are the meanings ‘way, path’ and ‘public fountain’ related? Are they? Are there connections to other items of the root √SBL?
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