▪ According to Jeffery1938, »The verse [Q 76: 5] is an early one descriptive of the joys of Paradise, where the Commentators were uncertain whether
kāfūr was the name of the fountain from which the Blessed drink, or the material used to temper the drink (cf. Ṭab. and Bayḍ. on the verse). – It is usually taken as an Ar word (
LA, vi, 465), but the variety of spellings –
kāfūr,
qāfūr,
qafūr, and
qaffūr – would suggest otherwise, and several of the early authorities noted it as a loan-word from Pers. The ultimate source is probably to be found in the Munda dialects of India, whence it passed into Dravidian, e.g. Tamil
karppūram, Malayalam
kappūram, and into Skr, cf.
karpūr. It passed also into Iranian, where we find Phlv
kāpūr, which gives the modPers
kāfūr, and Arm
k'ap'owr, and into Aram where we find Syr
qapūrā and Mand גופארא. – It is very probable that the Syriac like the Grk
kaphourá is from the Iranian, and Addai Sher, 136, would make the Ar also a borrowing from the Persians. The probabilities are, however, that it, like the Eth [Gz]
kəfūr,
1
is to be taken as derived from the Syriac. We find the word in the early poetry (e.g. in al-Aʕshā), but the story told by Balādhurī (ed. de Goeje, 264), that the Arab soldiers who conquered Madā’in found stores of camphor there and took it for salt, would seem to show that the article was not widely known in Arabia«.
▪ Geyer1905: 61-62: »Es ist schwer zu sagen, ob wir unter
kāfūr wirklich stets den heute bei uns nur mehr medizinal gebrauchten Kampferwein oder auch anderweitig gewürzten Wein zu verstehen haben (vgl. die einander widersprechenden Angaben bei Lane, s.v.). Er wird ziemlich häufig genannt, am häufigsten wohl bei ʕUmar ibn ʔAbī Rabīʕah [lC7/eC8], und zwar VI 19, X 16, XVI 14, CLXXI 6, CLXXXIII; an den Stellen XXXII 1 und CXV 12 bezeichnet
kāfūr‑ nur den Riechstoff, und es ist nicht auszuschließen, daß dies auch an einer oder der anderen von den früher angeführten der Fall ist«.
▪No relation whatsoever with the many
KFR roots (↗√
KFR).