Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Several etymologies have been put forward, but the case is far from being convincingly solved.
▪ The spectrum ranges from a relation to the vb. I ḥāra ‘to (re)turn’ (the quarter as a place with a dead end that forces one to return) over the notion of ‘circle’ (the quarter as an ‘encircled, enclosed’ place) and a correspondance with SAr words for ‘to settle, reside’ and/or ‘(en)camp(ment)’ to a derivation from a Copt (< Eg) word for ‘road, lane’ and/or ‘to depart, be distant’.

hist

▪ …

cogn

▪ In DRS 9 (2010), Ar ḥāraẗ appears twice, in two different entries: on the one hand (s.v. #ḤWR-3), it is seen to be cognate with Ar ḥāra ‘to come back, return’, ʔaḥāra ‘to reply’, Tham ḥr ‘to return, come back’, Ar ḥawāriyy ‘apostle’; Gz ḥora, Tña ḥorä, Gaf (a)horä, Har ḥāra, Gur wärä ‘to go’; Gz ḥawāryā ‘traveler, messenger, apostle’; Ar ḥāraẗ ‘quarter (of a town)’, ? SudAr ḥōr ‘circulare, non-covered wall’; Sab Qat ḥwr ‘to build, to settle (in a town)’, ḥwr ¹ ‘resident, inhabitant, immigrant (in a city)’; Qat ‘to order, decree’, Sab Min ḥwr ‘to be put in operation, be published’, hḥr ‘to decree, order’. On the other hand (s.v. #ḤYR-1), the cognates are said to be Palm ḥyrh ‘citadel’, Syr ḥirtā ‘encampment’,² Ar ḥayr ‘enclosure’, Sab ḥyr ‘to put up a camp’, ḥyrt, ḥrt ‘encampment’.³ )] Via an Aram connection, the word may even be akin to ↗ḤḌR, see DISC below.
▪ Youssef2003: Eg ḫ3rw , Copt ḥir ‘lane’ (ThLAeg: Eg ḫr, ḫ3rw ‘street, lane’).
▪ Albright1927: Eg ḥry ‘to depart, be distant’, ḥr.t ‘road’, Gz ḥōra ‘to go, travel’

1. According to Müller2010#ḤWR-2 the form is a plural.’ 2. PayneSmith1903: also ḥyārtā, ‘a shepherd’s camp; a mandra, convent’. 3. So also Müller2010 and Stein2012, s.v. ḤYR.

disc

▪ Among the many etymologies that have been proposed so far, two seem to be quite convincing in terms of semantics:
▪ a) The first is the one that links ḥāraẗ to Aram words like Palm ḥyrh ‘citadel’, Syr ḥirtā ‘encampment’ (PayneSmith1903: also ḥyārtā, ‘a shepherd’s camp; a mandra, convent’), from which probably also Sab ḥyr ‘to put up a camp’ and ḥyrt, ḥrt ‘encampment’ derive. In this case, Ar ḥāraẗ would also be akin to Ar ↗ḥayr ‘fenced-in garden, enclosure’, which has to be seen together with the Aram and Sab words. According to DRS 9 (2010)#ḤYR-1, Syr ḥirtā »est traditionnellement rapporté à la racine ḤḌR (Ar ḥaḍr, Hbr ḥāṣer > Syr […]), supposant le passage (normal en Aram) de ḍ à ʕ, puis à Ø au contact de ḥ.¹ « Should this be right, then Ar ḥāraẗ would go back, ultimately and via a “detour” taken through Syr or Sab, to ↗ḥaḍara ‘to be present; to stay in a place, settle’ (which shows some overlapping with ↗ḥaẓara ‘to fence in’, cf. also ḥaẓīraẗ ‘enclosure, hedge; compound, yard’, and perhaps also with ↗ḥaṣara ‘to surround, encircle, encompass; to enclose’). The original meaning here would be ‘place where one stays, of settling down, encampment’.
▪ b) The second suggestion that has semantic plausibility to it, is to relate Ar ḥāraẗ to Sab Qat ḥwr ‘to build, to settle (in a town)’, ḥwr (pl.) ‘residents, inhabitants, immigrants (in a city)’. DRS groups these (and Ar ḥāraẗ) together with SudAr ḥōr ‘uncovered circular wall’, a meaning that is not attested elsewhere but matches well with one of the values given by BAH2008 for the root ḤWR in ClassAr, namely ‘circle, to encircle’. Should these items be the nearest cognates of Ar ḥāraẗ, then a ‘quarter’ would originally be the *‘encircled district, enclosure (surrounded by a wall)’. Since most ClassAr dictionaries as well as DRS link the idea of a circle or encircling to the vb. Ar ḥāra ‘to come back, return’, one could go a step farther and assume that the idea of a quarter was built on that of a circle.
▪ But – are the connections, put up on purely semantic considerations, possible also phonologically? Details of derivation remain quite obscure in both cases. In option (a) above, the Ar word would have suffered the loss of a y, ī, or ay/ē and compensated this by a long ā, which would be rather exceptional. In option (b), a w, ū, or aw /ō would have changed into ā – not very likely either.
▪ Most ClassAr dictionaries and, partly, also DRS, relate ḥāraẗ ‘quarter, lane’ to the vb. I ḥāra ‘to return’. This is less problematic in phonological terms, but here details of semantics remain doubtful. The standard explanation is to interpret the quarter as a location with a dead end where one has to ‘turn’ and ‘return’ in order to get out.
▪ In contrast to the above hypotheses, Youssef2003 derives ḥāraẗ directly from Copt ḥir ‘lane’, from Eg ḫ3rw (ThLAeg: Eg ḫr, ḫ3rw) ‘street, lane’. Hoch1994#343 thinks that the Eg word »is almost certainly related« to Akk ḫarrānu ‘street, road’, for which one has to conform the BiblHbr n.pr.loc. ḥārān ‘The Road’ (a city in Northern Mesopotamia, located along the main trading route through the Aramean heartland) and Ug ḫrn ‘caravan’. To derive Ar ḥāraẗ from Copt ḥir is phonologically problematic, but should there be any direct relation between the Ar word and Eg ḫr, ḫ3rw, then ḥāraẗ would originally the ‘street, lane’ and, secondarily, ‘quarter’.
Albright1927 brings ‘road, lane’ and ‘to (re)turn’ together in juxtaposing Eg ḥr.t ‘road’, ḥry ‘to depart, be distant’ and Gz ḥōra ‘to go, travel’ as well as Ar ḥāraẗ ‘quarter, lane’ and ḥāra ‘to (re)turn’.

1. Discussion, with references, in Marrassini 1971: 92.

west

–

deriv

► ḥāraẗ al-sadd, n., blind alley, dead-end street

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