▪ Fraenkel1886: 141: is to be found in the Q due to the parable of the mustard seed, but must have been known in Arabia already earlier, since the word is attested already in the
Dīwān of the Huḏaylites (Div. Huḏ. 83,3). The existence of the variant
ḫarḏal (with
ḏ instead of
d) arouses the suspicion that it is from Syr.
▪ Jeffery1938, 122: »Both passages [in the Qurʔān] are reminiscent of the [Grk]
hōs kókkon sinápeōs of Matt, xvii, 20, etc. – The Muslim authorities take it as an Ar word, though they are in some doubt as to whether it should be
ḫardal or
ḫarḏal. Fraenkel,
Fremdw, 141, has shown, however, that the word is a borrowing from Aram
ḥardāl; Syr
ḥarḏᵊlā. The probabilities are in favour of its being from the Syr
ḥarḏᵊlā, which as a matter of fact translates
sínapi in the Peshitta text of Matt. xvii, 20, etc., and occurs also in Christian Palestinian.
1
The borrowing will have been early for the word is used in the old poems, e.g.
Dīwān Hudhayl, xcvii, 11.«
▪ Any relation between ḪRDL_1 ‘mustard (seeds)’ and ḪRDL_2
†ḫardala ‘to cut into big pieces’? The latter may belong to a group of roots that seem to be derived from, or extensions of, a bi-consonantal basis ↗*ḪR- ‘to split, mince, chop, throw into disorder, confuse, spoil’, to which also belong ↗
ḪRBṬ, ↗
ḪRBQ, ↗
ḪRṬ, ↗
ḪRQ, ↗
ḪRM. Mustard, then, could be *‘the crushed, grinded seeds’.