▪ Jeffery1938: »It occurs only in an early Meccan Sūra in a passage describing the delights of Paradise.
The exegetes were quite at a loss to explain the word. Zam. says that it refers to
ʕabqar, a town of the Jinn, which is the home of all wonderful things, and Ṭab., while telling us that
ʕabqarī is the same as
zarābī or
dībāǧ states that the Arabs called every wonderful thing
ʕabqarī.
It seems to be an Iranian word. Addai Sher, 114, suggests that it the Pers
ābkār, i.e.
āb kār, meaning ‘something splendid’, from
āb ‘splendour’ and
kār ‘something made’. That would be Phlv
āb ‘lustre, splendour’
1
(cf. Skt.
ābʰā) and
kār ‘labour, affair’
2
from Av
kār (cf. Skt.
kār),
3
so Phlv
ābkār would mean a ‘splendid or gorgeous piece of work’. It must be admitted, however, that this derivation seems very artificial.«