▪ Jeffery1938: »Both passages have reference to O.T. events, the former to the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal, and the latter to the offerings of Cain and Abel. Both passages are Madinan. / The Muslim authorities take the word as genuine Arabic, a form
fuʕlān from
qaraba ‘to draw near’ (Rāġib,
Mufradāt, 408). Undoubtedly it is derived from a root QRB ‘to draw near, approach’, but in the sense of oblation it is an Aram development, and borrowed thence into the other languages. In OAram we find
qrb in this sense, and the Targumic
qrbnʔ, Syr
qurbānā are of very common use. From the Aram it was borrowed into Eth [Gz] as
qʷərbān (Nöldeke,
Neue Beiträge, 37), and the [SAr]
qrbn of the SAr inscriptions is doubtless of the same origin.
1
/ Hirschfeld,
Beiträge, 88, would derive the Ar word from the Hbr,
2
but Sprenger,
Leben, i, 108, had already indicated that it was more likely from the Aram and the probabilities seem to point to its being from the Syr.
3
It must have been an early borrowing as it occurs in the early literature.«
▪ …
▪ …