▪ Jeffery1938: »Only in the pl. ʔaqfāl, where al-Ǧawālīqī, Muʕarrab, 125, says it is a borrowing from Pers.1
/ The verb qaffala is denominative2
and the word cannot be derived from an Ar root. It is probably the Aram qwplʔ ‘a fetter’, or Syr qplā, which translates the Grk kleîθron, and would have been an early borrowing.3
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