Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ In Islamic eschatology, the term has taken the specific meaning of ‘interval between the present life and that which is to come, from the period of death to the resurrection’.

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▪ DRS 2 (1994) #BRZḪ follows Jeffery1938 (see below, section DISC) and art. »barzakh« in EI² in deriving Ar barzaḫ from Pers farsaḫ; so also DHDA. But Rolland2014 is prob. closer to the truth when he traces Ar barzaḫ ‘intervalle, séparation, isthme’ back to oPers barsaḫ, akin to Av barz-ahva «qui devait désigner une sorte de purgatoire, ou, comme pour les Soufis, ʻle lieu situé entre le monde matériel et le monde spirituel (Dozy)’, IndEur *bʰergʰ‑ ‘hauteur fortifié’ + *ansu‑ ‘esprit’». In a similar vein, Cheung suggests a Parth origin, either in an (not attested, but rather likely) compound *bwrz-ʔḫw /burzaḫw/ ‘the High, Exalted World, Existence’, or in a Parth rendering *bwrzʔḫ(w) /burzāḫw/ of Av barəzāhu (loc.pl.) ‘in the heights’. In view of the Qur’ānic semantics Cheung would also not exclude that Ar barzaḫ is the result of a conflation of two Parth formations, *bwrzʔḫ(w) ‘an unsurmountable passage, height’ and ‘the Existence beyond, Jenseits’, respectively; for details see below, section DISC.
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▪ eC7 (barrier, partition) Q 23:100 huwa qāʔilu-hā wa-min warāʔi-him barzaḫun ʔilā yawmi yubʕaṯūna ‘It is but a word that he speaketh; and behind them is a barzaḫ until the day when they will be resurrected’; Q 25:53 wa-huwa ’llaḏī maraǧa ’l-baḥrayni, hāḏā ʕaḏbun furātun wa-hāḏā milḥun ʔuǧāǧun, wa-ǧaʕala bayna-humā barzaḫan wa-ḥiǧran mahǧūran ‘And He it is Who hath given independence to the two seas (though they meet); one palatable, sweet, and the other saltish, bitter; and hath set a barzaḫ and a forbidding ban between them’; Q 55:20 bayna-humā barzaḫun lā yabġiyāni ‘There is a barzaḫ between them. They encroach not (one upon the other)’

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▪ Jeffery1938: »In 25:53 and 55:20, it is the barrier between the two seas (baḥrayn) where the reference is probably to some cosmological myth. In 23:100, it is used in an eschatological passage, and the exegetes do not know what the reference is, though as a glance at al-Ṭabarī’s Commentary will show, they were fertile in guesses. / That the word is not Ar seems clear from the Lexicons, which venture no suggestions as to its verbal root, are unable to quote any examples of the use of the word from the old poetry, and obviously seek to interpret it from the material of the Qurʔān itself. / Addai Sher, 19, sought to explain it from the Pers parzak ‘weeping, crying’, but this has little in its favour, and in any case suits only 23:100. Vollers, ZDMG, 1:646, makes the much more plausible suggestion that barzaḫ is a by-form of farsaḫ ‘parasang’, from the Phlv frasang, modPers farsang, which preserves its form fairly well in Grk parasángēs, but becomes Aram prsā or prsh, Syr parsaḥā whence the Ar farsaḫ. The Phlv frasangan of PPGl, 116, means a ‘measure of land and of roads’¹ and could thus fit the sense ‘barrier’ in all three passages.«
▪ Cheung2017(rev): »The connection with the traditional Iranian unit of distance, the parasang (Pers farsaḫ, mPers frasang, etc.), is semantically not quite fitting, as it does not explain how this mundane measurement could have acquired these eschatological overtones. / Actually, the Ar form barzaḫ looks like a Parth compound *bwrz-ʔḫw /burzaḫw/ ‘the High, Exalted World, Existence’, mirroring the opposite term dwj-ʔḫw ‘hell’ (with pref. dōž- ‘dys-’). The concept ʔḫw originally refers to an existence beyond this world without being qualified as “bad” or “good”. Unfortunately, *bwrz-ʔḫw has not yet been found in our limited Parth corpus of texts and inscriptions, although bwrz and ʔḫw are attested, separately, in mPers and Parth. Of course, ʔḫw does occur in compounded formations, e.g. Manich mPers rwšnʔḫw ‘world of light’ and Parth dwj-ʔḫw ‘hell’ (also borrowed into nPers duzāḫ). The form burz is also found in Manich mPers, and is considered a Parth loanword with the figurative meaning of ‘exalted, lofty’. The denominative verb burzīdan ‘to praise, honour’ is also derived from burz. Incidently, Ar barz² with the meaning ‘intelligent, respectable; dignified’ points to borrowing from Parth bwrz ‘high, lofty’, possibly via Pers. / Alternatively, especially in view of Sūrah 55:20, barzaḫ could also reflect a Parth rendering *bwrzʔḫ(w) /burzāḫw/ of Avestan barəzāhu (loc.pl.) ‘in the heights’, which is attested in the famous Yasht dedicated to the deity Mithra. In the following passage, Yasht 10.45, the abode of Mithra, the deity that upholds the contract, “is set in the material world as far as the earth extends, unrestricted in size, shining, reaching widely abroad, for whom on every height, in every watchpost, eight servants sit as watchers of the contract”. This abode is a place, “where is no night or darkness, no wind cold or hot, no deadly illness, no defilement produced by evil gods” (transl. Gershevitch 1967: 95 ff., 99). Considering the fact that, in the Qurʔān, the meanings of barzaḫ allude to some sort of ‘(a means of) separation of two seas’ and also to an existential matter, Ar barzaḫ may well reflect two, conflated, (near-)homonymous Parth formations, *bwrzʔḫ(w) ‘an unsurmountable passage, height’ and ‘the Existence beyond, Jenseits’, respectively. / There is one phonological difficulty remaining, the apparent mismatch of the vocalism of Ar barzaḫ and its Parth source *burzāḫw, together with Ar barz ~ Parth burz. Ar -a- in the first syllable of barzaḫ may reflect the older sub-phonemic pronunciation -ǝ- (prior to its later labial “colouring”), i.e. Parth [bǝrzāḫw] and [bǝrz] respectively.³ «
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1. See Horn, Grundriss, 182; Nyberg, Glossar, 73. 2. »barz is usually classified under the Ar root ↗BRZ ‘to come, go out’ in lexicographical works.« 3. »The oIr, so-called “vocalic” *ṛ (in the proto-form *bṛza(nt)- of Parth burz) would have regularly developed into *ǝr, after which the schwa-vowel received its phonemic realization i or u, depending on the consonantal environment.«

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