Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ The n. which originally meant s.o. forming part in a mutual relationship of protecting and protection (an important cultural institution), belongs to the Sem root *GWR ‘to dwell together, be a neighbour’ (Militarev/Stolbova: Sem *gūr- ‘to live; to be close by’ < AfrAs *gir- ‘to live’; Dolgopolsky: WSem *-gūr- ‘to dwell’ < Nostr *gû˹w˺RV ‘(roof of a) hut; to dwell’).

hist

ǧār Alongside with ‘neighbour’, the Qurʔān still has also the value ‘protector’: (neighbour) Q 4:36 wa’l-ǧāri ḏī ’l-qurbà ‘and unto the neighbour who is of kin’; (one who protects, grants asylum or sanctuary) Q 8:48 lā ġāliba la-kumu ’l-yawma mina ’l-nāsi wa-ʔinnī ǧārun la-kum ‘no man shall conquer you today for I am a protector for you’

ǧāwara (vb. III, to dwell in the neighbourhood of, be\come adjacent to, be a neighbour of) Q 33:60 ṯumma lā yuǧāwirūna-ka fī-hā ʔillā qalīlan ‘then they will not be your neighbours in it but for a short time’. – ʔaǧāra (vb. IV, to protect, grant asylum or sanctuary) Q 72:22 ʔinnī lan yuǧīra-nī mina ’llāhi ʔaḥadun ‘no one will protect me against God’. – ĭstaǧāra (vb. X, to ask for protection, seek asylum, seek sanctuary) Q 9:6 wa-ʔin ʔaḥadun mina ’l-mušrikīna ’staǧāra-ka fa-ʔaǧir-hu ḥattà yasmaʕa kalāma ’llāhi ‘And if anyone of the idolaters should seek your protection (O Muhammad), then protect him so that he may hear the Word of God’.

cogn

▪ DRS 2 (1994)#GWR-1¹ Ug gr ‘to lodge, take refuge, be protected’, gr [Tropper2008: /gêru/ < *gawiru ] ‘hôte étranger / protected, guest, foreigner’; Hbr gwr ‘to dwell as alien’, gēr ‘protected citizen, stranger’, Phoen *gr, Nab Palm gr, JP Syr giyyorā ‘étranger, hôte public ou privé, client / peregrinus, cliens’; Mand guara ‘demeure temporaire’; Ar ǧār- ‘voisin, client’, ǧārat , Tham grt ‘protection’; Sab gr ‘master, lord; business partner’, SAr gr, Šḫ ger, Mhr ǧawīr ‘étranger’; Gz gor ‘étranger, voisin’, gəyur ‘étranger, hôte’; Te Tña gor ‘voisin’; Amh gorä-bet ‘voisin’; ?Har gār ‘maison, chambre’. ² – This value is perhaps also cognate to those given in DRS as #GWR-2 and #GWR-3, cf. section cogn in disambiguation entry ↗ǦWR.

▪ Outside Sem, Militarev&Stolbova1995#932 compare (LEC) Som gir-, Or gir, Rend *gir-, u.a. ‘to be, exist’; Dolgopolsky2012#663 juxtaposes evidence from Sem languages with (LEC) Som guri ‘house, home’, Rend gūra ‘to move to a new dwelling place’, Sid gare ‘tribe, people, village’ and (WCh) Hau gàrī́, ‘town, inhabited environment’.

1. Complemented with data from Kogan2015: 117 (values given in Engl or Lat). 2. Cf. also Mhr šəgēwər, Jib sə̃gēr ‘to become neighbour; to ask (God) for protection’ and Soq gārheten ‘female neighbours’; but these are likely to be borrowed from Ar – Kogan2015.

disc

▪ Like ↗ḍayf, also ǧār may ultimately be *‘s.o. who has deviated from the path and inclined towards the side’. This—unattested—hypothetical basic meaning must be assumed if we try to see Sem *GWR ‘to dwell together, be a neighbour’ together with *GWR ‘to be hostile, attack, oppress’; the *‘stranger (who has lost his way)’ may both ‘ask for protection as a neighbour’ and ‘attack’, become a ‘foe’; see disambiguation entry ↗ǦWR.

▪ Irrespective of the preceding, ǧār is treated in ClassAr lexicography as one of the ʔaḍdād (sg. ḍidd), i.e., words that, apart from one meaning, may take another that is—or at least seems to be—its exact opposite. Even in MSA, the two values [v1] ‘neighbour’ and [v2] ‘refugee’ still seem to be contradictory. [v3] ‘protégé, charge’, however, gives the modern speaker a hint as to how [v1] and [v2] are related: a refugee is s.o. who asks for and/or is granted protection like/as a neighbour. In ClassAr, the neutral value ‘neighbour’ and the passive ‘foreigner, seeker of protection’ or ‘protected one’ are complemented by the active ‘giver of protection, one who grants refuge, protects, preserves, an aider, assister, confederate’ (Lane). As Nöldeke has shown in his famous study on the ʔaḍdād (Wörter mit Gegensinn, 1910, 72-73), the semantic “riddle” can be explained through a change of perspective: primarily, the ǧār is neither the ‘protector’ nor the ‘protected’ (or ‘seeker of protection’) but a person who is involved, as either the giver or the recipient, in a ǧiwār, which is a mutual relationship (known also from Eur languages, cf. e.g. Lat hospes, It ospite, Fr hôte ‘host; foreigner, guest’), an institution of customary law that includes rights and obligations on both parts, cf. art. “Djiwār” (J. Lecerf), in EI².

▪ Militarev&Stolbova1995#932 reconstruct Sem *gūr- ‘to live; to be close by’ and LEC *gir- ‘to be, exist’, both going back to AfrAs *gir- ‘to live’. Very similarly, Dolgopolsky2012 #663 reconstructs WSem *-gūr- ‘to dwell’, which he thinks is derived, together with the ECu and WCh (*gar˅ ‘town’) vocabulary as well as some alleged Dravidic and Altaic cognates, ultimately from Nostr *gû(w)R˅ ‘(roof of a) hut; to dwell’.

west

–

deriv

► ǧāwara, vb. III, to be the neighbour of s.o. (DO), live next door to; to be adjacent, be next (DO to s.th.), adjoin; to be in the immediate vicinity of, be close to; to border (DO on): L-stem, denom., associative.
► ʔaǧāra, vb. IV, to grant asylum or a sanctuary (DO to s.o.); to protect (DO s.o., min from), take (s.o.) under one’s wing; to stand by s.o. (DO), aid: Š-stem, denom., caus. (*to make s.o. one’s protégé)
► taǧāwara, vb. VI, to be neighbours; to be adjacent; to have a common border: tL-stem, intr.
► ĭstaǧāra, vb. X, to seek protection, seek refuge (bi¬ with s.o., min from s.th.), appeal for aid (DO to s.o., min against s.th.): Št-stem, requestative.

► ǧāraẗ, pl. āt, n.f., neighbouress: f. of ǧār.
► ǧīraẗ, n.f., neighbourhood: quasi-vn. I.
► ^BP#1721ǧiwār, n., neighbourhood, proximity: vn. III; bi-~, prep., in the neighbourhood of, in the vicinity of, near, close to | ʔilà ~i-hī, adv., beside him, at his side
► muǧāwaraẗ, n.f., neighbourhood, proximity: vn. III.
► ʔiǧāraẗ, n.f., protection, granting of asylum: vn. IV.
► taǧāwur, n., neighbourhood (reciprocal); contiguity, relationship (of several things): vn. VI.
► ^BP#1793muǧāwir, 1. adj., neighbouring, adjacent; near, close by; 2. (pl. -ūn), n., student (esp. of Al Azhar University; living in the vicinity of the Mosque): PA III.
► muǧīr, n., protector: PA IV.
► mutaǧāwir, adj., having a common border; adjoining, adjacent, contiguous: PA VI.

For other values attached to √GWR cf. ↗ǧār, ↗ǧāra, ↗ǧūraẗ, ↗ǧūrī (1) and ↗ǧūrī_2, as well as, for the whole picture, ↗ǦWR.

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