▪ Previous research regards both Ar
qaryaẗ ‘village, small town’ [v2] and
qariyyaẗ ‘yard (naut.)’ [v3] as loans from Syr, while it remains silent on the complex of ‘treating a guest, receiving hospitably’ [v1].
▪ A look into dictionaries of ClassAr makes clear that given the large semantic variety within √QRY (and the partially overlapping ↗√QRW), we are obviously dealing with a very old root and therefore have to reckon with a high degree of diversification and complexity.
▪ Treating items of [v2], Huehnergard2011 suggested the meaning ‘to meet’ as the basic value of a WSem vb. *
qr or *
qry, cf. Hbr
qārā ‘to encounter, meet, befall’. BDB connects the latter to ClassAr
†qarā,
u, ‘to go, seek earnestly’ (↗QRW, ↗
taqarrà, ↗
ĭstaqrà) as well as to
qarà,
i, ‘to receive hospitably (as a guest)’ (and also Gz
ʔaqāraya ‘to present, offer as a sacrifice’). Should this be correct, then both [v1] and [v2] would derive from this notion of ‘meeting, coming together’: ‘hospitality’ as s.th. that is (to be) applied when people ‘meet’, and ‘village, town’ as a place where people come together. [v3] ‘yard’ (of a sailship), too, has been interpreted as ultimately going back to the idea of beams or planks ‘meeting’ each other (↗
qariyyaẗ).
▪ ClassAr also has the notion of ‘to meet’, though only in the specialized form of [v4] ‘water running down a hill and collecting (= meeting) in a meadow’, or ‘hole in the root of a palm tree where the sap collects (i.e., meets)’. Cf. also:
1
†qarà,
i, ‘to collect water in a reservoir’,
†qiran,
‑à, ‘eau recueillie et ramassée dans le réservoir’,
†muqtarin,
‑ī, ‘s.o. who collects water in a reservoir’
2
,
†qariyy (pl.
quryān) ‘endroit au bas d’une hauteur où s’amasse l’eau qui descend des hauteurs; canal, ruisseau par lequel l’eau descend des collines’,
3
†maqran,
‑à, ‘lieu où l’on ramasse l’eau, réservoir’,
†miqrāẗ ‘grand réservoir d’eau’. To this complex belongs also (usually assigned to ↗QRW, not QRY) the n.
†qarw (pl.
ʔaqrāʔ,
ʔaqrin /
‑ī,
ʔaqruwaẗ,
quriyy) ‘abreuvoir, bassin; long water vessel approached by camels / for camel foals;
4
tuyau
ou conduit par lequel s’écoule le suc du raisin exprimé dans le pressoir / outlet of a wine-press; tronc de palmier creusé dans lequel on fait du vin;
espèce d’ auge faite d’un tronc de palmier; vase à boire, coupe; petite auge dans laquelle on donne à boire aux chiens / trough to feed dogs’, and perhaps also [v5]
†qāriyaẗ,
qāriyyaẗ ‘sorte d’oiseau aux jambes courtes, au bec long et au plumage du dos vert, qui présage la pluie’ (= *‘the one making the clouds meet and rain’?).
5
. As another kind of ‘flowing together’ (= meeting) could be conceived the n.
†qarw ‘gonflement du scrotum / hydrocele, hernia, orchiocele/scrotal hernia’.
6
▪ From the intr. ‘flowing together / meeting’ may be the more general trans. [v6] *‘to collect, store’, as in the vb.
†qarà,
i, ‘to chew the cud, have an inflated cheek from storing the cud in the mouth (camel)’ and the n. (usually derived from QRW)
†qaran,
‑ā (pl.
ʔaqrāʔ) ‘courge vidée dans laquelle on conserve des mets’.
▪ ClassAr also has the PA I f.
†qāriyaẗ with the meaning ‘settlement’ and this is explained as
al-miṣr al-jāmiʕ ‘the city/town that brings together, collects, unites (sc. people)’, i.e., derived from [v6]. Should this be, against all previous assumptions, the etymon of
qaryaẗ (
qāriyaẗ > *
qā̆ryaẗ >
qaryaẗ)? The same would of course be thinkable if
qāriyaẗ was not *‘the one (sc. settlement) that brings together’ but (from [v1]) *‘the hospitable one, (settlement) that receives strangers hospitably’.
▪ [v1] ‘hospitality’ itself is perhaps not from [v4] *‘to meet’ but from ‘bowl’ (i.e., *‘to entertain a guest with s.th. to drink, offered to him in a bowl’).
▪ [v7] and [v8] are treated as belonging to ↗QRW_3 rather than to QRY.