▪ Jeffery1938: »It occurs only in early Sūras in descriptions of the pleasures of Paradise, and was recognized by some of the early authorities as a Nabataean word (cf. al-Suyūṭī,
Itq, 319;
Mutaw, 60).
1
Some, of course, endeavoured to derive it from
kāb, but this verb is obviously denominative (
TA, i, 464;
LA, ii, 225).
The word is commonly used in the early poetry, cf. ʕAdi b. Zaid, al-ʔAʕšà (Geyer,
Zwei Gedichte, i, 56 =
Dīwān, ii, 21), ʕAbda b. atl-Ṭabīb,
2
etc., and seems to have been an early loan-word from Aram, as Horovitz,
Paradies, 11, has noted, though Aram
kwbʔ, Syr
kūbā both seem to be from the ByzGrk
koûpa (Lat
cupa, cf. Fraenkel,
Vocab, 25), from the older Grk
kúmbē.
3
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