▪ Jeffery1938: »The Commentators differ among themselves as to whether it stands for a Jewish, a Christian, or a Sabian place of worship. They agree, however, in deriving it from ṣamaʕa (cf. Ibn Durayd, 166), and Fraenkel agrees,1
thinking that originally it must have meant a high tapering building.2
The difficulty of deriving it from ṣamaʕa, however, is obvious, and al-Ḫafāǧī, 123, lists it as a borrowed word. / Its origin is apparently to be sought in SArabia, from the word that is behind the Eth [Gz] ṣomāʕt ‘a hermit’s cell’ (Nöldeke, Beiträge, 52),3
though we have as yet no SAr word with which to compare it.«