▪ Jeffery1938: »The last of these passages refers to the destruction of the army of the Elephant, and the others to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In both cases the siǧǧīl is something rained down from heaven, and as the latter event is referred to in Sūra li, 33, we get the equivalence of ṭīn = siǧǧīl, which gives the Commentators their cue for its interpretation.1
/ It was early recognized as a foreign word, and generally taken as of Pers origin.2
Ṭab. going so far as to tell us wa-kil wa-huwa bi’l-fārisiyyaẗ sank, which is a very fair representation of sang and gel (Fraenkel, Vocab, 25; Siddiqi, Studien, 73). sang meaning ‘stone’ is the Phlv sang from Av asan3
and gel meaning ‘clay’, the Phlv gīl,4
related to Arm kir (Horn, Grundriss, 207).5
From mPers it passed directly into Ar. Grimme, ZA, xxvi, 164, 165, suggests SAr influence, but there seems [to be] nothing to support this.«