Bibliotheca Polyglotta

1 sign, token, mark; 2 miracle; wonder, marvel, prodigy; 3 model, exemplar, paragon, masterpiece (fī of, e.g., of organization, etc.); 4 Koranic verse, ʔāy al-ḏikr) the verses of the Koran; 5 passage (in a book), utterance, saying, word; 6 pl. ʔāyāt… (with foll. genit.) most solemn assurances (of love, of gratitude) – WehrCowan1979.

conc

▪ From protSem *ʔāyat‑ ‘sign, mark (*‑at‑ ‘feminine suffix)’ – Huehnergard2011.

hist

Of very frequent occurrence in the Q, e.g., 2:39, 3:4, 36:33 ‘sign’.

cogn

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disc

▪ Jeffery1938: »Later it [sc. ʔāyaẗ] comes to mean a verse of the Qurʔān, and then a verse of a book, but it is doubtful whether it ever means anything more than ‘sign’ in the Qurʔān, though as Muḥammad comes to refer to his preaching as a sign, the word tends to the later meaning, as e.g. in iii, 5, etc. It is noteworthy that in spite of the frequency of its occurrence in the Qurʔān it occurs very seldom in the early Meccan passages.¹ / The struggles of the early Muslim philologers to explain the word are interestingly set forth in LA, xviii, 66 ff. The word has no root in Ar, and is obviously, as von Kremer noted,² a borrowing from Syr or Aram. The Hbr ʔôt (cf. Phoen ʔt), from a verb ʔāwāʰ ‘to sign or mark’, was used quite generally, for signs of the weather (Gen. i: 14; ix: 12), for a military ensign (Numb, ii: 2), for a memorial sign (Josh, iv: 6), and also in a technical religious sense both for the miracles which attest the Divine presence (Ex. viii: 19; Deut. iv: 34; Ps. lxxviii: 43), and for the signs or omens which accompany and testify to the work of the Prophets (1 Sam. x: 7, 9; Ex. iii: 12). / In the Rabbinic writings ʔôt is similarly used, though it there acquires the meaning of a letter of the alphabet, which meaning, indeed, is the only one the Lexicons know for the Aram ʔtʔ.³ / While it is not impossible that the Arabs may have got the word from the Jews, it is more probable that it came to them from the Syr-speaking Christians.⁴ The Syr ʔātā, while being used precisely as the Hbr ʔôt, and translating sēmeîon both in the LXX and N.T., is also used in the sense of argumentum, documentum (PSm, 413), and thus approaches even more closely than ʔôt the Qurʔānic use of the word. / The word occurs in the old poetry, e.g. in Imruʔ al-Qais, lxv, 1 (Ahlwardt, Divans, 160), and so was in use before the time of Muḥammad.«
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1. Not more than nine times in Sūras classed by Nöldeke as early Meccan, though many passages in these are certainly to be placed much later, and one may doubt whether the word occurs at all in really early passages. 2. Ideen, 226 n.; see also Sprenger, Leben, ii, 419 n.; Cheikho, Naṣrāniyya, 181; and Margoliouth, ERE, x, 539. 3. In BiblAram, however, ʔāt means a sign wrought by God; cf. Dan, xxx: 33. 4. Mingana, Syriac Influence, 86. Note also the Mand ʔwtʔ ‘sign’.

west

▪ (Huehnergard2011:) Engl aya, ayatollah, from Ar ʔāyaẗ ‘sign’.

deriv

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