▪ Jeffery1938, 140-41: »I[n the Qurʔān, i]t occurs always as a title of God, almost as a personal name for God.
1
– Certain early authorities recognized the word as a borrowing from Hebrew. Mubarrad and Thaʕlab held this view, says as-Suyūṭī,
Itq, 321;
Mutaw, 58, and it is quoted from az-Zaǧǧāǧ in
LA, xv, 122. – The root
rḥm is common Semitic [↗√
RḤM ], and several Ar forms are used in the Qurʔān, e.g.
raḥima;
raḥmaẗ;
riḥm;
raḥīm;
marḥamaẗ; but the form of
raḥmān is itself against its being genuine Ar. Fraenkel,
Vocab, 23, pointed out that
RḤMNā occurs in the Talmud as a name of God (e.g.
ʔMR RḤMNā ‘saith the all-merciful'), and as Hirschfeld,
Beiträge, 38, notes, it is also so used in the Targums and in the Palmyrene inscriptions (cf.
NSI, p. 300;
RES, ii, 477). In the Christian-Palestinian dialect we find
RḤMN, which is the equivalent of the Targumic
MRḤMN and in Lk. vi, 36, translates [Grk]
oiktírmōn,
2
and in the SAr inscriptions
RḤMNN occurs several times
3
as a divine name.
4
– There can be little doubt that it was from S. Arabia that the word came into use in Ar,
5
but as Nöldeke-Schwally, i, 113, points out, it is hardly likely to have originated there and we must look elsewhere for the origin.
6
Sprenger,
Leben, ii, 198-210, in his discussion of the word, favours a Christian origin,
7
while Hirschfeld,
Beiträge, 39, insists that it is of Jewish origin, and Rudolph,
Abhängigkeit, 28, professes to be unable to decide between them.
8
The fact that the word occurs in the old poetry
9
and is known to have been in use in connection with the work of Muḥammad's rival Prophets, Musailama of Yamāma
10
and al-Aswad of Yemen,
11
would seem to point to a Christian rather than a Jewish origin, though the matter is uncertain.«
▪ For the root itself cf. √RḤM.