Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Accord. to Jeffery1938, ḥikmaẗ ‘wisdom’ and ↗ḥakīm ‘wise, sage; doctor; philosopher’ »seem undoubtedly to have been formed under Aram influence«. Our own hypothesis is that the NSem *‘wisdom’ is a development from an earlier *‘to govern’ (wisdom as proof of the capacity to make decisions, pass judgement, rule’), which in itself may be based on the idea of ‘retaining, keeping control, fencing, curbing’, still present in ↗ḥakamaẗ ‘bit of a horse’s bridle; martingale’ or the vb. I ↗ḥakama in the sense of ‘to bridle, check, curb’, and reflected also in vb. IV ʔaḥkama ‘to make firm, sturdy, solid; to strengthen, consolidate; to fortify; to do well, do expertly, master, be proficient’.
▪ …

hist

▪ Occurs some nineteen times in the Q, cf. ii, 123, 146; v, 110 ‘wisdom’.
▪ …

cogn

▪ ↗ḥakama.

disc

▪ See above, section CONC.
▪ Jeffery1938, 111: »It [sc. ḥikmaẗ] is clearly a technical word in the Qurʔān, being used in its original sense only in ii, 272, but applied to Luqmān (xxxi, 11), to David (ii, 252; xxxviii, 19), to the Prophet’s teaching (xvi, 126; liv, 5), to the Qurʔān (ii, 231; iv, 113; xxxiii, 34; lxii, 2), and used synonymously with ‘revealed book’ (iii, 43, 75, 158; iv, 57; v, 110; xvii, 41; xliii, 63). In connection with it should be noted also ↗ḥakīm with its comparative ʔaḥkamᵘ. – The root ḤKM is of wide use in Sem, but the sense of ‘wisdom’ appears to be a NSem development,¹ while the SSem use of the word is more in connection with the sense of ‘govern’. Thus in NSem we find Akk ḫakmu ‘to know’; Hbr ḥāḵam; Aram ḥăḵam; Syr ḥăḵam ‘to be wise’,² and ḥkmh ‘wisdom’ in the Zenjirli inscription. Thus [Ar] ḥikmaẗ and ḥakīm³ seem undoubtedly to have been formed under Aram influence.⁴ With ḥikmaẗ compare Hbr ḥāḵᵊmāh; Aram ḥāḵᵊmṯā; Syr ḥāḵᵊmṯā, and the Zenjirli ḥkmh; and with ḥakīm compare Aram ḥăḵīm; Syr ḥăḵīmā which as Horowitz, KU, 72, notes, is common in the earliest Aram period. It is possible that the word came into use from SArabia, for we find ḥkm in a Qat inscription published by Derenbourg,⁵ and which Nielsen takes to be an epithet of the moon-god.«
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1. But see Zimmern, Akkad. Fremdw, 29. 2. So ḥkm in the Ras Shamra tablets. 3. We already have ḥkm in Safaite, and the name Ἀχιμ Achim . See Wuthnow, Menschennamen, 31, and Ryckmans, Nom propres, i, 91. 4. Horovitz, KU, 72, rightly adds that ḥukm = ḥikmaẗ is similarly under Aram influence. 5. »Nouveaux textes yéménites inédits«, in Rev.Ass, 1902, p. 117 ff., and see Nielsen in ZDMG, lxvi, 592.

west

–

deriv

►li-ḥikmaẗ … (with foll. genit.), prep., on account of, because of.

►ḥikmī, adj., gnomic, aphoristic, expressing maxims: nisba formation from the preceding. | šiʕr ~, n., gnomic poetry.
►^BP#1948ḥakīm, pl. ḥukamāʔᵘ, adj., 1a wise, judicious; b wise man, sage; 2a philosopher; b physician, doctor: ↗s.v.
►ḥakīmbāšī, n., senior physician, chief surgeon: nisba formation from the preceding.
►ʔaḥkamᵘ, adj., wiser: elative of ḥakīm.

See also ↗ḥakama, ↗ʔaḥkama, ↗ḥakam, ↗ḥakamaẗ, ↗ḥakīm, ↗ḥukūmaẗ, ↗maḥkamaẗ, ↗taḥakkum, and, for the overall picture, root entry ↗√ḤKM.

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