the Arabic name for Saul, King of Israel (cf. l Sam. X.23) – BAH2008
▪ BAH2008: »the non-Arabic origin of this word is recognised by the sources which describe it as being of foreign or Hbr origin«
▪ eC7qāla la-hum nabiyyu-hum ʔinna ’llāha qad baʕaṯa la-kum Ṭālūta malikan ‘their prophet said to them, “God has sent Saul to you as king”’
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▪ Jeffery1938: »Some of the early authorities know that it was a foreign word. Bayḍ. tells us thatit is ĭsm ʕibrī, and al-Jawālīqī, Muʕarrab, 103; al-Ḫafāǧī, 128, give it as non-Arabic. / The Hbr word is Šāʔûl1
and none of the Christian forms derived therefrom give us any parallel to ṭālūt. The philologers derive his name from ṭāla ‘to be tall’, evidently influenced by the Biblical story, as we see from Bagh. on ii, 248. Geiger, 182, suggested that ṭālūt was a rhyming formation from ṭāla to parallel ǧālūt. The word is not known earlier than the Qurʔān,2
and would seem to be a formation of Muḥammad himself from Šāʔûl, a name which he may not have heard or remembered correctly, and formed probably under the influence of ṭāla to rhyme with ǧālūt.3
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