▪ Jeffery1938: 236 : » Hbr
qiryāh is a poetical synonym for
ʕīr, a ‘town’ or ‘city’, and it is a question whether it and the related
qǟrǟṯ; Phoen
qrt (cf.
Carthage); Ras Shamra
qr,
qrt; and Moab
qr (
Mesha Inscription, 11, 12, 24) are not really related to the Hbr
ʕīr and derived from the Sumerian
uru, a ‘state’.
1
In any case the Hbr
qiryāh is parallel with the Syr
qerīṯā, a ‘town’ or ‘village’, and from the Syr came the Ar
qaryaẗ, as Zimmern,
Akk Fremdw, 9, notes. (Cf. Nöldeke,
Beiträge, 61 ff., and
Neue Beiträge, 131.)«
▪ Orel&Stolbova1994#1568 reconstruct Sem *
ḳʷary‑ ‘town, village’, Berb
a-ɣaram, ECh *
kyar‑, Omot *
ḳer‑ ‘house, dwelling’), all from AfrAs *
ḳer‑ ‘dwelling’. The latter, the authors say, is a morphophonological variant of (#1589) AfrAs *
ḳor‑ ‘house, place’ [StarLing2007: *
ḳʷar‑ ‘block of houses, settlement, town’] which appears as Sem *
ḳur-an‑ ‘villages’ (pl., with suffix
‑an‑), WCh *
ḳwar‑ ‘hut’, CCh *
kwa-kwar‑ (partial redupl.) ‘town’), ECh *
kwaru‑ ‘place’, LEC *
ḳor‑ ‘block’, Rift *
ḳor‑ ‘brick house’.
▪ Is the ‘settlement’ (town, village) connected to the notion of ‘hospitality’ so that ‘to receive hospitably’ (↗
qarà) could be seen as denominative, properly *‘to grant the protection (and comfort) of a (fortified) settlement’?
▪ ClassAr has also
†qāriyaẗ (the PA I f. of ↗
qarà) with the meaning ‘settlement’ and this is explained as
al-miṣr al-jāmiʕ ‘the (fortified) settlement that brings together, collects, unites (sc. people)’, i.e., derived from QRY_6. Should this be, against all previous assumptions, the proper 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 QRY_1) *‘the hospitable one, (settlement) that receives strangers hospitably’.