▪ Among the many etymologies that have been proposed so far, two seem to be quite convincing in terms of semantics:
▪
a) The first is the one that links
ḥāraẗ to Aram words like Palm
ḥyrh ‘citadel’, Syr
ḥirtā ‘encampment’ (PayneSmith1903: also
ḥyārtā, ‘a shepherd’s camp; a mandra, convent’), from which probably also Sab
ḥyr ‘to put up a camp’ and
ḥyrt,
ḥrt ‘encampment’ derive. In this case, Ar
ḥāraẗ would also be akin to Ar ↗
ḥayr ‘fenced-in garden, enclosure’, which has to be seen together with the Aram and Sab words. According to
DRS 9 (2010)#ḤYR-1, Syr
ḥirtā »est traditionnellement rapporté à la racine ḤḌR (Ar
ḥaḍr, Hbr
ḥāṣer > Syr […]), supposant le passage (normal en Aram) de
ḍ à
ʕ, puis à
Ø au contact de
ḥ.
1
« Should this be right, then Ar
ḥāraẗ would go back, ultimately and via a “detour” taken through Syr or Sab, to ↗
ḥaḍara ‘to be present; to stay in a place, settle’ (which shows some overlapping with ↗
ḥaẓara ‘to fence in’, cf. also
ḥaẓīraẗ ‘enclosure, hedge; compound, yard’, and perhaps also with ↗
ḥaṣara ‘to surround, encircle, encompass; to enclose’). The original meaning here would be ‘place where one stays, of settling down, encampment’.
▪
b) The second suggestion that has semantic plausibility to it, is to relate Ar
ḥāraẗ to Sab Qat
ḥwr ‘to build, to settle (in a town)’,
ḥwr (pl.) ‘residents, inhabitants, immigrants (in a city)’.
DRS groups these (and Ar
ḥāraẗ) together with SudAr
ḥōr ‘uncovered circular wall’, a meaning that is not attested elsewhere but matches well with one of the values given by BAH2008 for the root ḤWR in ClassAr, namely ‘circle, to encircle’. Should these items be the nearest cognates of Ar
ḥāraẗ, then a ‘quarter’ would originally be the *‘encircled district, enclosure (surrounded by a wall)’. Since most ClassAr dictionaries as well as
DRS link the idea of a circle or encircling to the vb. Ar
ḥāra ‘to come back, return’, one could go a step farther and assume that the idea of a quarter was built on that of a circle.
▪ But – are the connections, put up on purely semantic considerations, possible also phonologically? Details of derivation remain quite obscure in both cases. In option (a) above, the Ar word would have suffered the loss of a
y,
ī, or
ay/ē and compensated this by a long
ā, which would be rather exceptional. In option (b), a
w,
ū, or
aw /
ō would have changed into
ā – not very likely either.
▪ Most ClassAr dictionaries and, partly, also
DRS, relate
ḥāraẗ ‘quarter, lane’ to the vb. I
ḥāra ‘to return’. This is less problematic in phonological terms, but here details of semantics remain doubtful. The standard explanation is to interpret the quarter as a location with a dead end where one has to ‘turn’ and ‘return’ in order to get out.
▪ In contrast to the above hypotheses, Youssef2003 derives
ḥāraẗ directly from Copt
ḥir ‘lane’, from Eg
ḫ3rw (ThLAeg: Eg
ḫr,
ḫ3rw) ‘street, lane’. Hoch1994#343 thinks that the Eg word »is almost certainly related« to Akk
ḫarrānu ‘street, road’, for which one has to conform the BiblHbr n.pr.loc.
ḥārān ‘The Road’ (a city in Northern Mesopotamia, located along the main trading route through the Aramean heartland) and Ug
ḫrn ‘caravan’. To derive Ar
ḥāraẗ from Copt
ḥir is phonologically problematic, but should there be any direct relation between the Ar word and Eg
ḫr,
ḫ3rw, then
ḥāraẗ would originally the ‘street, lane’ and, secondarily, ‘quarter’.
Albright1927 brings ‘road, lane’ and ‘to (re)turn’ together in juxtaposing Eg
ḥr.t ‘road’,
ḥry ‘to depart, be distant’ and Gz
ḥōra ‘to go, travel’ as well as Ar
ḥāraẗ ‘quarter, lane’ and
ḥāra ‘to (re)turn’.