Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ ‘This root is said to originate from the word ʕAbqar, the name of the place which the ancient Arabs believed to be the home of the wondrous jinn. It is said also to be a name of a town, either in the Yemen or in al-Ǧazīra, where cloth of great beauty is made. Some scholars, however, suggest that the word came into Ar from Pers long before the revelation of the Qur’an. The concepts associated with this root include: ‘genius, talent, poetical inspiration, rich floral types of carpet’ (the latter revealing perh. a Pers origin for the word)’ – BAH2008

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ʕabqarī عَبْقَريّ

√ʕBQR

(a kind of) rich carpet – Jeffery1938

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▪ eC7 Q iv, 76 – Jeffery1938.

▪ Jeffery1938: »It occurs only in an early Meccan Sūra in a passage describing the delights of Paradise.
The exegetes were quite at a loss to explain the word. Zam. says that it refers to ʕabqar, a town of the Jinn, which is the home of all wonderful things, and Ṭab., while telling us that ʕabqarī is the same as zarābī or dībāǧ states that the Arabs called every wonderful thing ʕabqarī.
It seems to be an Iranian word. Addai Sher, 114, suggests that it the Pers ābkār, i.e. āb kār, meaning ‘something splendid’, from āb ‘splendour’ and kār ‘something made’. That would be Phlv āb ‘lustre, splendour’¹ (cf. Skt. ābʰā) and kār ‘labour, affair’² from Av kār (cf. Skt. kār),³ so Phlv ābkār would mean a ‘splendid or gorgeous piece of work’. It must be admitted, however, that this derivation seems very artificial.«

1. PPGl, 87, and cf. Horn, Grundriss, 3. 2. West, Glossary, 194, and Horn, Grundriss, 831. 3. Bartholomae, AIW, 444 ff.

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