▪ Youssef2003: from Eg
pr ʕ3 ‘pharaoh’
▪ Rolland2014: from Eg
per-o, via Syr. [PayneSmith1903:
perʕūn ]
▪ Jeffery1938: »The Commentators tell us that
firʕawn was the title of the kings of the Amalekites,
1
just as Chosroes and Caesar were titles of the kings of Persia and Roum (Ṭab. and Bayḍ. on ii, 46). It was thus recognized as a foreign word taken over into Ar (Sībawaih in Siddiqi,
Studien, 20, and al-Jawālīqī,
Muʕarrab, 112). / Hirschfeld,
New Researches, 13, thinks that it came to Ar from Hbr, the form being due to a misreading of
PRʕH as
PRʕWN but there is no need to descend to such subtleties when we note that the Christian forms give us the final
n. In Grk it is
pharaôn, in Syr
perʕūn, and in Eth [Gz]
firʕon. The probabilities are that it was borrowed from Syr (Mingana,
Syriac Influence, 81; Sprenger,
Leben, i, 66; Horovitz,
JPN, 169). / There does not seem to be any well authenticated example of the word in pre-Islamic times, for the oft quoted examples from Zuhair and Umayya are spurious.
2
Sprenger has noticed the curious fact that the name does not occur in the Sūra of Joseph where we should naturally expect it, which may indicate that the name was not known to Muḥammad at the time that story was composed, or may be was not used in the sources from which he got the material for the story.«