▪ The item is absent from Freytag1830, Lane1877, and Bustānī1869, but listed in Kazimirski1860 (
ḥarš), Dozy1881 (
ḥirš), Wahrmund1887 (
ḥurš) and Hava1899 (
ḥarš). Bustānī1867 has it (as
ḥirš), but qualifies it as “foreign” (
muwalladaẗ). Given
- that the word is missing in the more “rigorous” ClassAr dictionaries and mentioned only in those which draw on more modern and popular sources;
- that vocalisation varies considerably in those dictionaries that have it;
- that Calice1936 and some earlier sources think that it is specific to the Levant,
it seems justified to follow Bustānī1867 in assuming that the word is of foreign origin, and to further assume that it has entered MSA through a local dialect. According to Calice1936 (basing himself on Gesenius), and also to Zimmern1914, this was LevAr (note however that with Zimmern it is
ḥurs ~
ḥirs, rather than
ḥurš ~
ḥirš). If this is correct, then the donor lang is very likely to have been Aram, and the fact that there is a cognate Aram
ḥūršā ‘wooded height’, Syr
ḥuršā ‘forest’ fits very well.
▪ Zimmern1914 would not exclude the possibility that Hbr
ḥōräš and Aram
ḥūršā are borrowed from Akk
ḫuršānu (pl.) ‘mountain region’, a word that according to CAD is of Sum origin. Should this be correct, then the ultimate source may be Sum
ḫur-sag̃ ‘hill-country; mountainous region’ (composed of ‘holes, valleys’ + ‘points, peaks’ – Halloran3.0).
▪ In contrast, Calice1936 puts the Akk, Hbr, Aram and Ar forms together with Eg (Pyr)
ḫ3s.t ‘mountainous region’ (TLA: ‘id., foreign land, desert’).
1
▪ While both an Akk < Sum connection and the possible Eg parallel are quite charming, the cognates in Jib (unless themselves borrowings) may also let us think of a purely Sem etymology. Should one, then, link ‘forest, wood’ (perh. from ‘mountainous region’) to the complex(es) of ‘roughness’ and ‘scratching’ (↗
ḥariš,
ḥaraša), a forest and, even more so, a mountainous region properly being a *‘rough landscape’ or a *‘region that looks as if scratched, roughened’?