Bibliotheca Polyglotta

The etymology of the n.prop.loc. for a the very fertile basaltic region in SW Syria and N Jordan where grain and wine were/are cultivated, is still rather obscure. It may be related to the notion of ‘blackness’ or ‘hollowness’ that appears in a number of lexical items belonging to the root ḤWR. The name may however also go back to older Aram or Can words, as also the ‘hollowness’ of ḤWR may have be a borrowing and, ultimately, stem from ḪWR. Further investigation needed.

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▪ No obvious cognates. Following are some candidates for a possible relationship:

▪ ? DRS 9 (2010)#ḤWR 2: Ar ḥayrà ‘nuit très noire’, DaṯAr ḥawīr ‘indigotier’, Mhr ḥōwər, Ḥrs ḥéwər, Jib ḥɔr, Soq ḥáhər, ḥawr, f. ḥáwroh ‘noir’, Mhr ḥəwīrūr, Ḥrs ḥewērōr, Jib ənḥírér ‘noircir, devenir noir’, ? Soq ḥaro, ḥeyroh ‘brouillard’.
▪ ? DRS 9 (2010)#ḤWR 10: Ar ḥawr ‘profondeur’, ḥāʔir ‘dépression dans le sol, fond de citerne’, ? ‘maigre’.
▪ ? Steingass1884: ḥūrān, pl. of ḥāʔir, ‘place where water gathers’
▪ Ar ḫawr ‘low, or depressed, ground or land, between two elevated parts’ – Lane.

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▪ The etymology of the name of the highly fertile, basaltic mountainous plateau in SW Syria and N Jordan that came into being as a result of volcanic activity, is still subject to speculation. The item is not mentioned in DRS at all. According to BDB1906, several conjectures have been made:

▪ One of these is that the name originally means *‘black land’, after the black basalt. This hypothesis is supported by the notion of ‘black’ attached to some items belonging to the root ḤWR, as given, e.g., in DRS #ḤWR-2. These seem to be mostly modSAr. The fact that the possible cognate ḥawr ‘black’, given in BDB on the authority of Maltzan,¹ is qualified as YemAr would also point in a SAr direction. BDB1906 also reports that there are tokens of immigration from Yemen into Ḥaurān.²
▪ Another meaning of the name, according to BDB1906, may be ‘land of caves’ (no Ar cognates mentioned).
▪ Yet another option is to connect it to the notion of ‘hollow’ which, according to Gabal2012, is one of the most basic meanings of the root, see ↗ḤWR. This value may also be contained in ↗maḥār ‘oyster(s)’.³
▪ Accord. to BDB, ‘hollow’ may be akin to Hbr ḥōr, ḥôr ‘hole’ which, however, is not from ḤWR but, probably, from ḤRR.
▪ BDB also considers the possibility of connecting the Hbr name ḥawr ān to Ar ḫawr (with initial ḫ, not ḥ !), which, according to the authors, means ‘hollow’. In the dictionaries of Ar the writer of the present entry was able to consult, however, ḫawr has nowhere the meaning of ‘hollow’, it rather denotes ‘low, or depressed, ground or land, between two elevated parts’ (Lane), which would be a good description of the Ḥawrān plateau. With this meaning, Ar ḫawr overlaps to a certain degree with Ar ḥawr ‘depth, cavity’ and, even more so, Ar ḥāʔir ‘depressed place, place in which water collects, place in the ground depressed in the middle and having elevated edges or borders, in which is water, and hence: a garden’ (Lane, s.v. ḤYR). The latter item is still found, e.g., in Steingass1884 as ḥāʔir ‘place where water gathers’ where it is said to have the pl. ḥūrān (but ClassAr has also ḥīrān). This, too, fits very well with the description of the landscape, given in EI²,⁴ as a place where »water from the many springs rising on the side of the massif «.
▪ As a note on the margin it should be said that the »low plateau (an average of 600 metres above sea-level) which forms the “heart” of the Ḥawrān [is] known as Nuqraẗ ‘hollow’«.⁵

1. Maltzan ZMG 1874: 230. 2. Wetzst in De, Job 2:598; ZKW 1884: 120. 3. Others however derive maḥār from ↗ḥāra ‘to turn, return’ or ḥawar ‘(marked contrast between surrounding black and) white’. 4. D. Sourdel, art. “Ḥawrān”, in EI². 5. Ibid.

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