Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ʕBD_1 ‘slave; bondsman, servant; worshipper’ ↗ʕabd
▪ ʕBD_2 ‘to make passable for traffic (a road)’: ʕabbada ↗ʕabd
▪ ʕBD_3 ‘a variety of melon’: EgAr ʕabdallāwī ↗ʕabd
▪ ʕBD_4 ‘Abadan (island and town in W Iran)’: ↗ʕabbādān

♦ Semantic value spectrum in ClassAr (acc. to BAH2008): ‘slave, servant, to enslave; obedience, submission, to worship, to adore; to tan camel hide, to tar a boat’. – Some scholars, apparently with no evidence save for the assumption that spiritual concepts are foreign to Arabic per se, attribute the concept of worshipping associated with some derivatives of this root to a borrowing from other Semitic languages. Al-Suyūṭī quotes Abū ’l-Qāsim’s suggestion that the sense of ‘to enslave’ is a borrowing from Nab.

▪ ʕBD_1 : from CSem *ʕabd ‘slave’
▪ ʕBD_2 : vn. II, from ʕabd (ʕBD_1), metaphorical use with caus. meaning of D-stem, lit. *‘to make (a road) subservient (to the users)’ (?)
▪ ʕBD_3 EgAr ʕabdallāwī : prob. from the n.prop. ʕabd allāh ‘servant of God’, from ʕabd (ʕBD_1)
▪ ʕBD_4 ʕabbādān, var. ʕabādān ‘Abadan (island and town in W Iran)’: n.prop.loc., prob. with Persian etymology, see ↗s.v..

–

See section CONC, above.

–

ʕabd عَبْد , pl. ʕabīd, ʕubdān, ʕibdān

ID 561 • Sw – • BP 694 • APD … • © SG | 15Feb2021, last update 3Jun2023

√ʕBD

▪ worshipper – Jeffery1938
▪ 1 slave, serf; 2 bondsman, servant; — (pl. ʕibād) 1 servant (of God), human being, man; 2 humanity, mankind | al-ʕabd lillāh, al-ʕabd al-ḍaʕīf = I (form of modesty) – WehrCowan1979.

▪ Kogan2011: from protCSem *ʕabd‑ ‘male slave’, perh. from the verbal root *ʕBD ‘to work, to make’ (Huehnergard2011: CSem *√ʕBD ‘to serve, work’; n. *ʕabd‑ ‘servant, slave’).
▪ Orel&Stolbova1994#1029: From Sem *ʕabd- ‘slave’, from AfrAs *ʕabod- ‘slave’.

▪ eC7 Of very frequent occurrence in the Q – Jeffery1938.
▪ …

▪ Kogan2015: Ug ʕbd, Hbr ʕäbäd, Syr ʕabdā, Sab Min Qat ʕbd.
▪ Orel&Stolbova1994#1029: Hbr ʕebed, Syr ʕabdō, SAr ʕbd. – Outside Sem: WCh (metath.?) bad-am, bawəd-n ‘slave’, CCh (metath.?) vəḍa, vḍa, vuḍa ‘slave’.

▪ Jeffery1938: »The root is common Sem, cf. Akk abdu,¹ Hbr ʕBD [ʕäbäd], oAram ʕbd, Syr ʕabdā, Phoen ʕbd, Sab ʕbd (and perhaps Eth [Gz] ʕbṭ, Dillmann, Lex, 988). / The question of its being a loan-word in Arabic depends on the more fundamental question of the meaning of the root. If its primitive meaning is ‘to worship’, then the word retains this primitive meaning in Ar, and all the others are derived meanings. There is reason, however, to doubt whether ‘worship’ is the primitive meaning. In the oAram ʕbd means ‘to make, to do’, and the same meaning is very common in JudAram and Syr. In Hbr ʕābad is ‘to work’,² and so Hbr ʕäbäd primarily means ‘worker’, as Nöldeke has pointed out,³ and the sense of ‘to serve’ is derived from this.⁴ With Hbr ʕābad meaning ‘to serve’, we get Hbr ʕäbäd, Aram ʕabdā, Syr ʕabdā, Phoen ʕbd and Akk abdu, all meaning ‘slave’ or ‘vassal’, like the Arab ʕabd, Sab ʕbd. From this it is a simple matter to see how with the developing cults [Hbr] ʕäbäd comes to be ‘a worshipper’, and ʕabada ‘to worship’, i.e. ‘to serve God’. / The inscriptions from NArabia contain numerous examples of ʕbd joined with the name of a divinity, e.g. ʕbdddwšrʔ = ʕabd ḏī šarà, ʕbdmnt = ʕabd Manāẗ, ʕbdlt = ʕabd al-Lāt, ʕbdʔlhʔ = ʕabd Allāh, ʕbdʔlʕzʔ = ʕabd al-ʕUzzà, to quote only from the Sinaitic inscriptions.⁵ Also in the SAr inscriptions we find ʕbdʕṯtr ‘ʕAbd ʕAṯtar’, ʕbdkll ‘ʕAbd Kallal’, ʕbdšms ‘ʕAbd Šams’, etc.⁶ It thus seems clear that the sense of ‘worship’, ‘worshipper’ came to the Arabs from their neighbours in pre-Islamic times,⁷ though it is a little doubtful whether we can be so definite as Fischer, Glossar, 77, in stating that it is from Jewish ʕbd.«
▪ Kogan2015: 181: »CSem *ʕabd- ‘slave’ is undoubtedly connected with the verbal root *ʕbd, whose attestations are, however, also limited to CSem: Ug ʕbd ‘to work (a field), to cultivate, to produce’, Hbr ʕbd ‘to work’, Syr ʕbd ‘laboravit; fecit’, Ar ʕbd ‘to serve, worship, adore’. Besides, since the meaning ‘to serve’ is probably the original one (cf. Huehnergard1995: 276), it is not unlikely that we are faced with a denominative vb. rather than with a deverbal noun (note that the C₁aC₂C₃- pattern is not commonly used to produce nouns of agent either in protCSem or in protSem).«
▪ Orel&Stolbova1994#1029: The Sem vb. *ʕ˅b˅d- ‘to work’ seems to be a denominative. — If one takes the Chad evidence into consideration, where the modern words seem to go back to WCh *bawad-<*baHwad- ‘slave’ and CCh *buḍ- < *buH˅d- ‘slave’, an alternative reconstruction could be AfrAs *baʕod-. In this case, Sem *ʕabd- would be the result of metathesis.

1. Zimmern, Akkad. Fremdw, 47. 2. Notice particularly the Niph. näʕbād ‘to be tilled’, used of land. 3. ZDMG, xl, 741. He compares the Eth [Gz] gabra ‘to work’ and gabr ‘a labourer’. 4. Gerber, Verba Denominativa, p. 14. 5. Cook, Glossary, 87, 88. For the Safaitic see ʕbdʔm, ʕbdgd, etc., in Littmann, Semitic Inscriptions, 1904; Ryckmans, Noms propres, i, 155, 240, 241, and compare the Phoen examples in Harris’ Glossary, 128, 129. 6. Vide Pilter, Index of South Arabian Names, for references, and Rossini , Glossarium, 201. 7. It was commonly used in this sense in the old poetry, see Cheikho, Naṣrāniyya, 172. Ahrens, Christliches, 20, would derive ʕibādaẗ directly from the [Hbr] ʕᵃbōdâʰ; cf. Horovitz, JPN, 213.

▪ Not from Ar ʕabd but from its Hbr cognate are the Biblical names Obadiah, from Hbr ʕōbad-yāh ‘servant of Yahweh’, from ʕōbad, alternate form of ʕebed ‘servant, slave’, and Abednego, from Hbr ʕābēd-nəgô, probably alteration of ʕăbēd-nəbô ‘servant of Nabu’, from ʕābēd, alternate form of ʕebed ‘servant, slave’ (nəbô, Nabu, from Akk nabū) – Huehnergard2011.

► ʕabada, u (ʕibādaẗ, ʕubūdaẗ, ʕubūdiyyaẗ), vb. I, to serve, worship (a god), adore, venerate (a god or human being), idolize, deify (s.o.): denom.
► ʕabbada, vb. II, 1 to enslave, enthrall, subjugate, subject (s.o.); 2 to make passable for traffic (a road): D-stem., denom. from ʕabd, caus. of G.
► taʕabbada, vb. V, to devote o.s. to the service of God; to show (divine) veneration (li‑ for s.o.), deify, worship (li‑ s.o.): tD-stem, refl./autoref. of D.
► ĭstaʕbada, vb. X, to enslave, enthrall, subjugate (s.o.): Št-stem.

► ʕabdallāwī (eg. ), n., a variety of melon: from the n.prop. ʕabd allāh ?
► ʕabdaẗ, pl. -āt, woman slave, slave girl, bondwoman: f. of ʕabd.
► ʕabbād: ~ al-šams, n., and ~aẗ al-šams, n.f., sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.): ints., lit. ‘the worshiper of the sun’.
► ʕabbādānᵘ, var. ʕabādānᵘ, n.prop.loc., Abadan (island and town in W Iran, oil center): prob. with Iranian origin, but attributed to a certain ʕAbbād by folk etymology.
► ^BP#2719ʕibādaẗ, n.f., worship, adoration, veneration; devotional service, divine service (Chr. ); pl. -āt, acts of devotion, religious observances (Isl. Law): vn. I.
► ʕubūdaẗ, n.f, 1 humble veneration, homage, adoration, worship; 2 slavery, serfdom; servitude, bondage: vn. I.
► ^BP#4873ʕubūdiyyaẗ, n.f, 1 humble veneration, homage, adoration, worship; 2 slavery, serfdom; servitude, bondage: vn. I.
► maʕbad, pl. maʕābidᵘ, n., place of worship; house of God, temple: n.loc., from vb. I.
► taʕbīd, n., 1 enslavement, enthrallment, subjugation, subjection; 2 paving, construction, opening (of a road for traffic): vn. II | ~ al-ṭuruq, n., road construction.
► taʕabbud, n., 1 piety, devoutness, devotion, worship; 2 hagiolatry, worship or cult of saints (Chr. ): vn. V.
► taʕabbudī, adj., pertaining to divine worship or the relation of man to God: nsb-formation, from vn. V.
► ĭstiʕbād, n., enslavement, enthrallment, subjugation: vn. X.
► ʕābid, pl. -ūn, ʕubbād, ʕabadaẗ, n., worshiper, adorer: PA I.
► maʕbūd, 1 adj., worshiped, adored; 2 n., deity, godhead; idol: PP I.
► maʕbūdaẗ, n.f., ladylove, adored woman: f. of PP I.
► muʕabbad, adj., levelled, graded, paved, passable for traffic (road): PP II.
► mutaʕabbid, 1 adj., pious, devout; 2 n., pious worshiper (Chr.): PA V.

ʕabbādānᵘ عبّادانُ , var. ʕabādānᵘ

√ʕBD

n.prop.loc.

Abadan (island and town in W Iran, oil center) – WehrCowan1979.

Popular etymology relates the name to an alleged founder of the city, ʕAbbād. Most probably, however, it is of Iranian origin. One suggestion is that the meaning is ‘coastguard station’ (from Pers āb ‘water’, and the root pā ‘watch, guard’), see DISC below.

▪ …

–

»In medieval sources, and up to the present [20th] century, the name of the island always occurs in the Arabic form ʕAbbādān; this name has sometimes been derived from ʕabbād ‘worshiper’. Balāḏurī (d. 279/892), on the other hand, quotes the story that the town was founded by one ʕAbbād b. Ḥusayn Ḫabiṭī, who established a garrison there during the governorship of Ḥaǧǧāǧ (75-95/695-714). An Iranian etymology of the name (from āb ‘water’, and the root pā ‘watch, guard’, thus ‘coastguard station’) was suggested by B. Farahvašī (“Arvandrūd”, MDAT, nos. 71/72, 1348š./1969: 75-87). Possible supporting evidence is the name Apphana, which Ptolemy (2nd cent. A.D.) applies to an island off the mouth of the Tigris (Geographia 6.7). The 4th-cen¬tury geographer Marcian, who, in general, draws his in¬formation from Ptolemy, renders the name Apphadana (Geographia Marciani Heracleotae, ed. David Hoeschel, Augsburg, 1600: 48). Thus there may have been some grounds for revising the name to Ābādān; the latter form had begun to come into general use before it was adopted by official decree in 1314š./1935 (see, e.g., Kayhān, Ǧoġrāfiyā, I: 77, 111)« – L.P. Elwell-Sutton, “Ābādān, I. History”, in EIr, I/1: 51-53, available online at Encyclopaedia Iranica (as of 15 Feb 2017).

–

ʕibādaẗ عِبادَة , pl. ‑āt

√ʕBD

n.f.

worship, adoration, veneration; devotional service, divine service (Chr. ); pl. -āt, acts of devotion, religious observances (Isl. Law) – WehrCowan1979.

vn., from ʕabada, u, vb. I, ‘to serve, worship (a god), adore, venerate’, prob. denom. from ↗ʕabd ‘slave’, from CSem *ʕabd ‘id.’.

▪ …

↗ʕabd.

–

Not directly derived from ʕibādaẗ, but semantically close are:

► taʕabbada, vb. V, to devote o.s. to the service of God; to show (divine) veneration (li‑ for s.o.), deify, worship (li‑ s.o.): tD-stem, refl./autoref. of D., from vb. I or denom. from ↗ʕabd
► taʕabbud, n., 1 piety, devoutness, devotion, worship; 2 hagiolatry, worship or cult of saints (Chr. ): vn. V.
► taʕabbudī, adj., pertaining to divine worship or the relation of man to God: nsb-formation, from vn. V.
► mutaʕabbid, 1 adj., pious, devout; 2 n., pious worshiper (Chr.): PA V.

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