Bibliotheca Polyglotta

(variously interpreted by ClassAr lexicographers as:) ‘false deity’, ‘sorcery’, ‘the devil’, ‘idol’, a name of a certain idol, said to belong to the tribe of Quraysh – BAH2008

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▪ acc. to BAH2008 hapax in the Qurʔān, of either Gz or Hbr origin

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▪ ec7 Q 4:51 ʔa-lam tara ʔilà ’llaḏīna ʔūtū naṣīban min-a ’l-kitābi yuʔminūna bi’l-ǧibti wa’l-ṭāġūti ‘have you considered those given a portion of the Scripture, who believe in idols and evil powers’

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▪ Jeffery1938: »It occurs only along with the Ethiopic word ṭāġūt in the sentence “they believe in Jibt and Ṭāghūt”. The exegetes knew not what to make of it, and from their works we can gather a score of theories as to its meaning, whether idol (ṣanam), or priest (kāhin), or sorcerer (sāḥir), or sorcery (siḥr), or Satan, or what not. It was generally agreed that it was an Ar word. Bayḍ., e.g., claiming that it was a dialectal form of ǧibs, a theory that was taken up by Rāġib, Mufradāt, 83, and others.¹ Some of the philologers, however, admitted that it was a foreign word (cf. Jawharī, sub voc., LA, ii, 325),² and from al-Suyūṭī, Itq, 320, we learn that some of them even knew that it was Ethiopic. / Margoliouth in ERE, vi, 249, suggested that it was the γλυπτά of the LXX from γλύφω ‘to carve, engrave’, which is used to translate Hbr fsl in Lev. xxvi: 1. This assumes that its meaning is very much the same as Ṭāġūt, i.e. ‘idol’, and this has the weight of evidence from the Commentators in its favour. It is a little difficult, however, to see how the Grk word could come directly into Arabic without having left any trace in Syriac. It is more likely that al-Suyūṭī’s authorities were right for once, and that it is an Abyssinian word. This has been recognized by Dvořák, Fremdw, 50, and by Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge, 48, who shows that [Gz] ʔamlāk gəbt = θεός πρόσφατος [‘new, recent god], and in [Gz] gəbt we have the form we need.«³
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1. ǧibs itself is a foreign word according to al-Khafājī, 58. Vollers, ZDMG, li: 206, says it is from γύψος. 2. Jawharī’s clinching argument is that ǧ and t do not occur as the first and last radicals of any genuine Ar word. 3. Leslau2006 (CDG, s.v. √wgb) gives the meaning of Gz gəbt as ‘sudden occasion, unexpected opportunity, accidental event, recent event’, cf. also Gz ʔawgaba ‘to arrive suddenly, attack suddenly, come upon suddenly, surprise, take unawares, (hence also:) to startle, frighten’. Leslau adds: »gəbt in Gz does not mean ‘idol’. It was misunderstood as such because of the expression ʔamāləkta gəbt ‘idols of recent (time), recent gods’. On the various opinions concerning Ar ǧibt expressed by Western scholars and Arab lexicographers, wee Wahib Atallah, Arabica 17 (1970): 71ff. On p. 81 he derives ǧibt from Qibṭ, a name given by the Arabs to the (ancient) Egyptians.«

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