▪ 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.«