▪
EI² (C. Rabin, »ʕArabiyya«):
ṣirāṭ might belong to a group of »some military terms« that »may have come directly from Latin.«
▪ Gutas (
EALL, »Greek Loanwords«) specifies: < Aram
ĭsṭrātiyā < Grk στράτα < Lat
strata.
▪ Jeffery1938, 195-96: »The word is used only in a religious sense, usually with the adj.
mustaqīm, and though frequently used by Muḥammad to indicate his own preaching, it is also used of the teaching of Moses (37:118) and Jesus (3:51), and sometimes means the religious way of life in general (cf. 7:16). / The early Muslim authorities knew not what to make of the word. They were not sure whether it was to be spelled ṣirāṭ, sirāṭ, or zirāṭ
1
and they were equally uncertain as to its gender, al-Akhfash propounding a theory that in the dialect of Hijaz it was fem. and in the dialect of Tamīm masc. Many of the early philologers recognized it as a foreign word, as we learn from as-Suyūṭī,
Itq, 322,
Muzhir, i, 130,
Mutaw 50. They said it was Grk, and are right in so far as it was from the Hellenized form of the Lat
strata that the word passed into Aram and thence into Ar. / The word was doubtless first introduced by the Roman administration into Syria and the surrounding territory, so that [Lat]
strata became [Grk]
stráta (cf. Procopius, ii, 1), and thence Aram
ʔsṭrṭyʔ,
ʔsṭrṭyʔ,
ʔysrṭyʔ,
srṭyʔ,
2
Syr
ĭstrāṭā.
3
From Aram it was an early borrowing into Ar, being found in the early poetry.
4
▪ …