▪ SṬR_1 ‘line, row; to draw lines, rule’ ↗saṭr ▪ SṬR_2 ‘cleaver’ ↗sāṭūr ▪ SṬR_3 ‘fable, legend, saga, story’ ↗ʔusṭūraẗ ▪ SṬR_4 ↗SYṬR ▪ … ♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘row of trees, palm trees, objects arranged in a sequence; written words in rows; falsehood; stories with no foundations’. – It has, however, been suggested that the root originated from a borrowing either from Grk or Pers.
▪ eC7 Q yasṭurūna 68:1, masṭūr 17:58, 33:6, 52:2; 54:53 [also the forms muṣayṭir 88:22, and muṣayṭirūn 52:37] ‘to write’, ‘to inscribe’. They are all early passages save 33:6, and possibly all refer to the same thing, the writing in the Heavenly Scrolls – Jeffery1938. ▪ …
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▪ Jeffery1938: »Nöldeke as early as 18601
drew attention to the fact that the noun saṭr seemed to be a borrowing from [Syr] šᵊṭārā = [Aram] šᵊṭrā,2
so that the verb, as Fraenkel, Fremdw, 250, notes, would be denominative. The Aram šᵊṭrā = [Syr] šᵊṭārā means a ‘document’, and is from a root connected with Akk šaṭāru ‘to write’. It occurs as šṭr in Nab and Palm inscriptions,3
and in the SAr inscriptions we have sṭr ‘to write’, and ʔsṭr ‘inscriptions’.4
D. H. Müller, WZKM, i, 29, thinks that the Ar may have been influenced both by the Aramaeans of the north, and the Sabaeans of the south, and as a matter of fact as-Suyūṭī, Itq, 311, tells us that Ǧuwaybir in his comment on 17:58, quoted a tradition from Ibn ʕAbbās to the effect that masṭūr was the word used in the Ḥimyaritic dialect for maktūb.5
The presence of the Phlv stūrē, as, e.g., in the phrase ???? = ‘in lines’ (PPGl, 205), makes us think, however, that it may have been Aramaic influence which brought the word to SArabia.6
In any case the occurrence of the word in the early poetry shows that it was an early borrowing.« ▪ …
►saṭarau (saṭr), vb. I, and saṭṭara, vb. II, 1 to rule (s.th.), draw lines (on a sheet of paper); 2 to write, jot down, record; 3 to draw up, compose: prob. denom. ►sāṭūr, pl. sawāṭīrᵘ, n., cleaver: … ►ʔusṭūraẗ, pl. ʔasāṭīrᵘ, n.f., fable, legend, saga, myth; fabulous story, yarn: ↗s.v. ►ʔusṭūrī, adj., mythical, legendary, fabulous: nisba formation, from ↗ʔusṭūraẗ. ►misṭaraẗ, pl. masāṭirᵘ, n.f., 1 ruler: n.instr.; 2 underlines, guideline sheet | misṭaraẗ al-ḥisāb, n.f., slide rule; see also ↗s.v.. ►misṭār, n., trowel: n.instr. I. ►masṭarīn, n., (EgAr) trowel. ►tasṭīr, n., writing down, recording: vn. II. ►musaṭṭar, n., piece of writing, paper, document: PP II.