Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ DRS 2 (1994) #BYḌ: Ar bāḍa ‘surpasser en blancheur’, ʔabyaḍ ‘blanc’; ?Te bäyyäṣä ‘être brillant’. – (commSem) ‘œuf, testicule’: Hbr (pl.) bēṣīm, nHbr bēṣā, Aram bēʕtā, nSyr (Ur) bītā, Mnd bita, Ar bayḍaẗ, Te bayč̣e. – Ar bīʕaẗ, SAr bʕt ‘église’.

disc

▪ Jeffery1938, 86-87: »It was early recognized as a ‎foreign word (as-Suyūṭī, Itq, 320; Mutaw, 46), and is said by al-Ǧawālīqī, Muʕarrab, 35, to be ‎a borrowing from Pers. One is at a loss to know why al-Ǧawālīqī should think it was Pers, ‎when it is so obviously the Syr bīʕtā,¹ unless perhaps we may suggest that he knew of Syrian churches ‎in Pers territory called by this name and jumped to the conclusion that it was a Pers word. ‎Syr bīʕtā is originally an ‘eggʼ (cf. Ar ↗bayḍ; Hbr bēṣā; Aram bīʕā) and then was used ‎metaphorically for the top of a rounded arch – BīʕTā ḏ-QBBH ḏ-PūRQSā, and so for the domed ‎buildings used for worship. – The word was well known in pre-Islamic times, being found in the SAr ‎inscriptions,² and ‎occurring not infrequently in the old poetry (e.g. Diwan Hudh., ed. Kosegarten, 3, l. 5), and may ‎be assumed to have entered Ar from the Mesopotamian area. It is interesting that the ‎traditional exegesis of the Qurʔān seems to favour the word in xxii, 41, being referred to maʕbad ‎al-naṣārā, though some thought it meant kanīsat al-yahūd, cf. Zam., Baiḍ., Ṭab., on the ‎passage, and TA, v, 285; as-Siǧistānī, 65.«
▪ Unrelated to ↗bāʕa ‘to buy/sell’.

1. This has been generally recognized, cf. Sprenger, ‎‎Leben, iii, 310, n.1; Fraenkel, Vocab, 24; Fremdw, 274; Rudolph, Abhängigkeit, 7; ‎Cheikho, Naṣrāniya, 201. 2. bʕt in the Abraha inscription, CIS, iv, No. 541, ll. 66 and 117.

west

–

deriv

–

Permanent link

http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=record&uid=d7c3b6fa-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067

Choose languages

Choose images, etc.

Choose languages

Choose display