Bibliotheca Polyglotta

1a rope, cable, hawser; b cord, string, thread; 2 pl. ḥibāl, beam, ray (e.g., of the sun, of light), jet (e.g., of water); 3 vein; 4 sinew, tendon – WehrCowan1979.

conc

▪ (DRS 9 #ḤBL-1, Kogan2015: 189) From protSem *ḥabl‑ ʻcord, rope’.
▪ Related to ↗ḥabila ‘to be(come) pregnant’? – See below, section DISC.
▪ …

hist

▪ eC7 Q 3:103, 112, 20:66, 26:44, 50:16, 111:5 ʻrope, cordʼ
▪ The meaning ^†ʻto snare a wild beast with a halterʼ of the obsol. vb. I is »obviously denominative«, as remarked already by Jeffery1938.
▪ …

cogn

▪ Bergsträsser1928: (*‘rope’) Akk eblu, Hbr ḥéḇel, Syr ḥaḇlā, Gz ḥabl.
▪ DRS 9 (2010) #ḤBL-1 protSem *ḥabl‑ ‘corde (pour lier)’: Akk ebl‑, Ug ḥbl, Hbr ḥȩbȩl, EmpAram *ḥbl ‘corde (?)’, Syr ḥablā, Mnd habla, Ar ḥabl, Soq ḥábehol; Gz ḥabl, ḫabl, Te ḥabl, Tña ḥabli, Amh ḥabl; Mhr ḥōbəl ‘lanière de cuir ceignant le front’, Ḥrs ḥōbəl ‘entrave’ Soq ḥábhol ‘harnais de cuir servant à monter au tronc des palmiers’, Mhr maḥbēl ‘ligne’. – Akk ebēlu ‘prendre au filet’, Ar ḥabala ‘tendre un filet pour prendre une bête; prendre au filet’; ḥibl ‘fin, rusé, habile’, Soq šḥabil ‘remarquer’. – Ug ḥbl ‘troupeau, volée (d’oiseaux) bande, compagnie’, Hbr ḥebel ‘bande, compagnie’ Ar ḥabala ‘lier avec une corde; faire un traité’, DaṯAr ḥabl ‘parentèle, tribu’, Sab Min ḥbl ‘alliance, pacte’, Sab ḥbl ‘conclure un pacte’, Qat ḥbl ‘troupe, bande’; Te ḥabbälä ‘tresser’; Akk ebl‑: mesure de surface, Hbr ḥȩbȩl: corde pour mesurer, surface, portion mesurée, YemAr ḥabīl: terre inculte située en hauteur.
▪ …

disc

▪ Jeffery1938, 107-108 follows Zimmern1914 in assuming an Aram (< Akk?) origin of the Qur’ānic ḥabl ʻrope’ : »The original meaning of ‘cordʼ occurs in cxi: 5, ‘a cord of palm fibre,ʼ and in the Aaron story in xx: 66; xxvi: 44; all of which are Meccan passages. In L:16, it is used figuratively of a ‘veinʼ in the neck, and in the Madinan Sūra, iii, the ‘cord of Godʼ, ʻcord of menʼ, apparently means a compact. – Zimmern, Akkad. Fremdw, 15 (cf. also his Babylonische Busspsalmen, 93 n.), declares that the Akk ḫbl is the source of the Hbr חֶבֶל; Aram חבלא; Syr ḥablā, and that this Aram form is the source of both the Ar ḥabl and the Eth [Gz] ḥabala . – While there may be some doubt about the ultimate derivation from Akk (see BDB, 286), the Ar verb ḥbl is obviously denominative ʻto snare a wild beast with a halterʼ, and we may accept its derivation from the Aram as certain.¹ – The Syr ḥablā seems to have been the origin of the Arm hałrk’,² and we may suspect that the Ar word came from the same source. In any case it must have been an early borrowing as it occurs in the old poetry.« – Jeffery’s conclusion is contested by Pennacchio: »In the Qur’ān, the word ḥabl means both ‘rope’ and ‘link’ in the figurative sense, in the same way that the BiblHbr term ḥeḇel designates both ‘a rope’ (Josh 2:15) and ‘a territory, a region’ (Josh 19:9 and Deut 3:4). The origin of the Hbr ḥeḇel and of the Aram and Syr ḥblʔ could well be the Akk naḫabalu meaning ‘rope, trap’. For Jeffery, the Ar ḥabl may come from Aram or from Syr; the scholar is certain that the Ar vb. ḥbl is a loanword because it is a denominative. Jeffery relies on Zimmern, who nonetheless doubts the Aram origin of the loanword. It seems that the Akk vb. ḫabâlu first meant ‘to oppress, to deceive (s.o.)’. The word then evolved to mean ‘to tie, to trap’, then ‘to capture, to take’, and finally ‘to damage, to destroy’. The word ḥabl appears in pre-Isl poetry, which points to its ancient existence in the Ar language, a hypothesis further supported by the fact that the Ar broken pl. ḥibāl ‘ropes’ is mentioned twice in the Qur’ān. However, the Ug m.n. ḥbl ‘rope, string’ has the same form as the Ar term, which could mean that it is a common Sem word. Nothing proves that it was borrowed from Aram, as Jeffery suggests« (2011: 6).
▪ Any connection with ↗ḥabila ‘to be(come) pregnant’? – Schulthess does not think so: »Mit […] ʻSeil’ werden die eben besprochenen Wörter [to be\become pregnant, conceive, labor pain] kaum zusammenhängen« (1900: 25). Militarev&Kogan2000, too, keep ʻrope’ apart from Ar ḥabal ʻfoetus’ (SED I #110) and ḥabila ʻconcevoir, devenir enceinte, grosse (d’un foetus) [BK]’ (SED I #21ᵥ), but think that some contamination may have happened between the two values, producing a meaning like ʻumbilical cord’. Nevertheless, Kogan2015 would not exclude that a relation »perhaps« exists.
▪ …
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1. The word occurs, however, in the Thamudic inscriptions; cf. Ryckmans, Nom propres, i: 87. 2. Hübschmann, Arm. Gramm., i, 308, and cf. Fr. Müller in WZKM, vii: 381.

west

–

deriv

►ḥabl al-warīd, n., jugular vein
►al-ḥabl al-surrī, n., umbilical cord
►al-ḥabl al-šawkī, n., spine
►ḥibāl ṣawtiyyaẗ, n.pl., vocal cords;
►ḥabl al-musākayn, n. (bot.), ivy;
►ḥibāl al-māʔ, n.pl., jets of water;
►ʔalqà (ʔaṭlaqa) ’l-ḥabl ʕalà ’l-ġārib, expr., to let things go, slacken the reins, give a free hand, impose no restraint;
►ĭrtiḫāʔ al-ḥabl, n., 1 slackening of the reins, yielding; 2 relenting;
►ĭḍṭaraba ḥablu-hū, vb. VIII, to get into a state of disorder, of disorganization, of disintegration, get out of control;
►laʕiba ʕalà ’l-ḥablayn, vb. I, to play a double game, work both sides of the street

►ĭḥtabala, vb. VIII, to ensnare, catch (s.o., s.th.) in a snare: Gt-stem, denom., self-ref.

►ʔuḥbūlaẗ, pl. ʔaḥābilᵘ, n.f., 1 snare, net; 2 rope with a noose; 3 pl. ʔaḥābilᵘ, tricks, wiles, artifices, stratagems (in order to get s.th.)
►ḥibālaẗ, pl. ḥabāʔilᵘ, n.f., snare, net
►ḥābil: ĭḫtalaṭa ’l-ḥābil bi’l-nābil, expr., everything became confused, got into a state of utter confusion; ḥābilu-hum wa-nābilu-hum, expr., together, all in a medley

For other values of the root, see ↗ḥabila and, for the overall picture, root entry ↗√ḤBL.

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