Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Cheung2017rev: prob. a direct borrowing from early nPers gunāh ‘id.’. For details, see below, section DISC.
▪ Following Jeffery1938 (see below, section DISC), ǧunāḥ ‘misdemeanor; sin’ is usually regarded as a borrowing from Pers gonāh. If from Pers, the emphatisation -h > -ḥ may have arisen due to possible association with ↗ǧanaḥa; after all, the value ‘misdemeanor; sin’ can easily be imagined as fig. use of ‘to incline, lean towards’ > ‘to incline to the wrong side, deviate from the right path’. Cf., however, the fact that DRS classifies the item neither as a borrowing nor as belonging to ‘wing’ etc., but as forming a distinct group together with some Syr and EthSem items.
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▪ eC7 (‘sin, wrong, crime’) Q 5:93, 33:55:5, 51, 55, etc. (25 occurrences), e.g.,1 (sin, crime; blame, censure, discordance) Q 4:128 wa-ʔini mraʔaẗun ḫāfat min baʕli-hā nušūzan ʔaw ʔiʕrāḍan fa-lā ǧunāḥa ʕalay-himā ʔan yuṣliḥā bayna-humā ṣulḥan ‘and if a-woman experiences discordance or alienation from her husband, there is no blame on them if they agree between them on a settlement’; 2 (jur., financial obligations) Q 2:236 lā ǧunāḥa ʕalay-kum ʔin ṭallaqtumu n-nisāʔa mā lam tamassū-hunna ʔaw tafriḍū la-hunna farīḍaẗan ‘there are no financial obligations on you if you divorce women unless you have touched them or have appointed a dowry for them’
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▪ DRS 3 (1993) #GNḤ-1 .... -2 [with Engl accord. to Leslau2006 (CDG)] Akk ganāḫu ‘to have a fit of coughing’, postBiblHbr gānaḥ ‘to groan, moan’, Syr gᵊnaḥ ‘s’étonner, admirer’, gūnḥā ‘stupeur, crainte, calamité’, Ar ǧunāḥ ‘méfait, faute’; reproche | reproach, remonstrance’, Gz ganḥa ‘être orgueilleux et violent | to behave impetuously, arrogantly, get angry, speak vehemently, reprimand’, gənāḥ ‘orgueil, violence | vehemence, haughtiness, rebuke, reprimand, scolding’, Te gänḥä ‘voir, observer; négliger’, gənḥät ‘regard, observation’, perh. Te təganḥa ‘to show o.s. > be proud > behave impetously’, Tña gänḥe ‘faire des reproches, améliorer | to get angry, make reproaches’. – ?Cf. also 3 Ar ǧanāḥ ‘aile, bord, côté’, ǧinḥ ‘bord, côté’, ǧunḥ ‘crépuscule’, ǧanaḥa ‘(se) pencher, s’incliner, décliner’, Jib génaḥ ‘aile’, Mhr agonəḥ ‘voler’, Soq ganḥ ‘côté’?
▪ Cf. perh. also ↗ǧinḥ.
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▪ Jeffery1938: »A favourite Madina word, occuring only in late passages. The favourite phrase is lā ǧunāḥᵃ ʕalà, and it is used as a technical term in Muḥammad’s religious legislation.¹ – The Lexicons give no satisfactory explanation of the word, though they apparently treat it as a genuine Ar formation. As Hübschmann showed in 1895 in his Persische Studien, 162, 212, it is the Pers gunāh,² through the Pazend gunāh (Shikand, Glossary, 247) from Phlv vinās,³ a ‘crime’ or ‘sin’ (as is obvious from the Arm vnas = [Grk] ʰamártēma in the old Bible translation),⁴ and the fact that venāh still occurs in one of the Pers dialects as a direct descendant from the Phlv vinās,⁵ which is related to Skr vināša and is quite a good Indo-European word. In Phlv the word is used technically just as in the Qurʔān, and we find such combinations as avinās ‘sinless’ (PPGl, 77); vināskārīh ‘sinfulness, iniquity’ (West, Glossary, 248); and vināskār ‘a criminal, sinner’ (PPGl, 225).⁶ – The word was borrowed in the pre-Islamic period and occurs in the old poetry, e.g., in the Muʕallaqa of al-Ḥārith, 70, etc., and was doubtless adopted directly into Arabic from the spoken Persian of the period, for the word is not found in Syriac.«
▪ According to Nişanyan_1Jul2021, Tu günah ‘crime, guilt’ too is based on Pers gunāh ‘guilt’ < mPers vināh or vinās ‘id.’ < oPers vi-nath ‘damage’ (with protIran prefix vi ). Syr gunāyā ‘guilt, crime’ < oPers; cf. Ar ↗ǧināyaẗ (> Tu cinayet). Arm vnas ‘damage’ < mPers ‘damage’. mPers vināskār > Arm vnasagar = Pers gunahkār > Tu günahkâr ‘guilty’
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1. Horovitz, KU, 62, n. 2. Vollers hesitatingly accepts this in ZDMG, 1, 689 (but see p. 612, where he quotes it as an instance of sound change), and it is given as a Persian borrowing by Addai Sher, 45. 3. Hübschmann, Persische Studien, 159, and Haug in PPGl, 225. Cf. West, Glossary, 247, Nyberg, Glossar, 243. 4. Hübschmann, Arm. Gramm, i, 248. 5. Horn, Grundriss, 208. Kurdish gunāh cannot be quoted in illustration as it is a borrowing from modPers. 6. The Pazend has similar combinations, e.g. gunâhi ‘sinfulness’, gunâhkâr ‘sinful, mischievous’, gunâhkârî ‘culpability’, gunāh-sâmânihâ ‘proportionate to the sin’, ham-gunâh ... ‘accomplice’ (Shikand, Glossary, 247).

▪ Not from Ar ǧunāḥ but prob. from the same source is Tu günah: 1303 [Codex Cumanicus] Lat culpa – Pers guna – Tu günah yazuk | Lat culpabilis – Pers guna kar – Tu yazuklamiş günahkâr. | 1317 [Gülşehri, Manṭıḳu'ṭ-Ṭayr] biz perişānuz Ġanī Perverdigār / biz günehkāruz Ġafūr Âmürzigār. | 1330 [Aşık Paşa, Ġarīb-nāme] yavuz işden ḥāṣıl oldı çok günāh – Nişanyan_1Jul2021
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►lā ǧunāḥᵃ ʕalay-hi ʔin ..., expr., it won’t be held against him if he ... ; it won't do any harm if he ...
►ǧunḥaẗ, pl. ǧunaḥ, n.f., misdemeanor (jur., less than a felony, ǧināyaẗ, and more than an infraction, ↗muḫālafaẗ)

For other values attached to the root, cf. ↗ǧanaḥa, ↗ǧinḥ, ↗ǧunḥ, ↗ǧanāḥ, and ↗ǧāniḥaẗ, as well as, for the whole picture, root entry ↗ǦNḤ.

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