Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ According to Huehnergard2011, Ar maḥlab ʻmahaleb’ is from ḥalaba ʻto milk’, cf. ↗ḥalab ʻmilk’ (n.). But do we have data to support this hypothesis, and what would the St Lucie cherry have in common with milk? Morphology does not support such an etymology either, as the maFʕaL pattern usually is a n.loc. signifying a place. Accord. to BK1860, the word means ‘noyaux semblables à ceux de cerises, venant d’Aderbaïdjan, province de la Perse’. The foreign provenance could be an indicator of the name being a borrowing. Another option may be that the cherry was called after the »spice obtained from the seeds inside the cherry stones […]. The seeds have a fragrant smell and have a taste comparable to bitter almonds with cherry notes. […] The chemical constituents are still uncertain, but the spice is prepared from the seeds, either by grinding and powdering the seed kernels, or in oil extracted from the seeds« (en.wiki). The maFʕaL form would allow an interpretation of maḥlab as ʻproduct squeezed (= “milked”) from the mahaleb seeds’.
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hist

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cogn

▪ Cf. ↗ḥalab ʻmilk’?

disc

▪ Traditionally, also the popular blancmange-like dessert called ↗mahallabiyyaẗ (with h, not ḥ), var. muhallabiyyaẗ, is explained as a derivation from ↗ḥalab ʻmilk’. However, while the h instead of ḥ may be due to a re-import from Tu (where the originally Ar word lost emphatic ḥ), the morphological structure of the word – *muḥallabiyyaẗ would be a f. nisba based on a PP II – runs contrary to such an interpretation, as form II is not attested and a nisba of PP II ʻmilk’ would mean *ʻbelonging to s.th. made milky, or milk-like’. Therefore, are we perh. dealing with a popular re-interpretation of ^†maḥlabiyyaẗ ʻperfume containing maḥlab’, used to flavour the sweet milky dish? (Or else *ʻdish flavoured with ^†ḥalbānaẗ ʻstorax/galbanum’, see ↗ḥalab and root entry ↗√ḤLB?)
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west

▪ Accord. to Huehnergard2011, Engl mahaleb is from Ar maḥlab ʻmahaleb’, from ḥalaba ʻto milk’ (↗ḥalab ʻmilk’). But see above, section CONC.

deriv

For other values attached to the root, cf. ↗¹ḥalab, ↗ḥalbaẗ, ↗ḥulbaẗ, ↗ḥālib, ↗²Ḥalabᵘ, as well as, for the overall picture, root entry ↗√ḤLB.

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