▪ The wider context is of course Ar ↗SLM, from Sem *ŠLM ‘to be whole, sound’.
▪ Jeffery1938: »The vb. ↗
salima is genuine Ar, corresponding with Hbr
šālēm, Phoen
šlm ‘to be complete, sound’: Aram
šlēm, Syr
šlēm ‘to be complete, safe’, Akk
šalāmu ‘to be complete, unharmed’. This primitive vb., however, does not occur in the Qurʔān. Form II,
sallama, is fairly common, but this is a denominative from ↗
salām, and
salām we shall see is a borrowed word.
1
– As used in the Qurʔān
ʔaslama is a technical religious term,
2
and there is even some development traceable in Muḥammad’s use of it.
3
Such a phrase as
man yuslim waǧhahū ʔilā ’llāhi in 31:22,
4
seems to give the word in its simplest and original sense, and then
ʔSLM li-rabbi ’l-ʕālamīn (40:66; 6:71; 2:131), and
ʔSLM li-llāh or
ʔSLM lahū (27:45; ii, 127; iii, 77; 39:54), are a development from this. Later, however, the word comes practically to mean ‘to profess Islam’, i.e. to accept the religion which Muḥammad is preaching, cf. xlviii, 16; xlix, 14, 17, etc. Now in pre-Islamic times
ʔaslama is used in the primitive sense of ‘hand over’, noted above. For instance, in a verse of Abū ʕAzza in Ibn Hišām, 556, we read
lā tuslimūnī lā yaḥillu ʔislām ‘hand me not over for such betrayal is not lawful’.
5
The Qurʔānic use is an intelligible development from this sense, but the question remains whether this was a development within Ar itself or an importation from without. – Margoliouth in
JRAS, 1903, p. 467 ff., would favour a development within Ar itself, perhaps started by Musailama; but as Lyall pointed out in the same Journal (p. 771 ff.), there are historical difficulties in the way of this. Lidzbarski,
ZS, i, 86, would make it a denominative from
salām which he takes as a translation of [Grk]
sōtēría, but Horovitz,
KU, 55, rightly objects. – The truth seems to be that it was borrowed as a technical religious term from the older religions. Already in the oAram inscriptions we find that
šlm as used in proper names has acquired this technical religious significance,
6
as e.g.
šlmlt, etc. The same sense is found in the Rabbinic writings (Horovitz,
KU, 55), but it is particularly in Syr that we find
ʔslm used precisely as in the Qurʔān, e.g.
ʔašlem nap̄š-eh lᵊ-ʔalāhā w-lᵊ-ʕZT-h ‘he devoted himself to God and His Church’, or
ʔšlmw lh npš-hwn,
7
and one feels confident in looking here for the origin of the Ar word. –
muslim, of course, is a formation from this,
8
and was in use in pre-Islamic Arabia.
al-ʔislām, however, would seem to have been formed by Muḥammad himself after he began to use the word.«
▪ Retsö (“Aramaic/Syriac Loanwords”, in
EALL), Kerr2014, and others follow Jeffrey. Given the fact, however, that the root Sem ŠLM is attested with religious connotations already in Akk, one should not so easily discard Lidzbarski’s view that
ʔaslama originally means ‘to enter in the state of
salām (= Grk
sōtēría)’ and refers to a practice that was a common good in pre-Islamic Arabia, namely ‘deliver o.s. in the protection (= safety,
salām) of a deity’. Ar ↗
salam_1 ‘prepayment’ is originally (in other Sem langs, like Akk, Ug or Hbr) a present given to s.o., or an offering made to a deity, to ensure benevolence, protection, safety, and the same word is also attested with the meaning of ‘captive’ (= who submits himself, without resisting, peacefully) and ‘captivity’ in Ar. Before declaring
ʔaslama to be an originally Christian idea, one will have to check whether it has not perhaps had a religious sense already in pre-Islamic times and therefore can count as part of a shared heritage in Late Antiquity Arabia.