Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ According to Jeffery, the Ar word is borrowed from Syr ḥarḏᵊlā ‘mustard (seeds)’, of unknown origin.
▪ From a cultural-historical perspective, the use of mustard seeds for medical purposes is interesting, cf., e.g., Lane ii (1865): ‘[mustard-seed;] the grain of a certain tree, (Q) well known; (Ṣ,Q) a species of ḥurf [q.v.]; (JQ) heating; emollient; drawing; a phlegmagogue; lenitive; digestive; used as a liniment, good for the niqris [or gout], and [especially] the nasā [or sciatica], and the [malignant species of leprosy termed] baraṣ, (Q) and the [mild species thereof termed] bahaq; clearing to the face; good for the alopecia, especially the wild sort thereof; (TA) its smoke drives away serpents, or, as in the Qānūn, venomous or noxious reptiles or the like; (TA) its juice, dropped, allays earache, (Q) and in like manner its oil; (TA) and its powder, upon the aching tooth, is extremly efficacious, (Q) especially when ḥilṯīt [or assa] has been cooked with it’.

hist

▪ eC7 (mustard seed) Q 21:47 wa-ʔin kāna miṯqāla ḥabbatin min ḫardalin ʔataynā bi-hā ‘Though it be of the weight of a grain of mustard seed, We bring it’

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▪ DRS 10 (2012)#ḪRDL-1: JP ḥardᵉlā, Ar ḫardal, Soq ḥardal ‘moutarde, senevé’

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▪ Fraenkel1886: 141: is to be found in the Q due to the parable of the mustard seed, but must have been known in Arabia already earlier, since the word is attested already in the Dīwān of the Huḏaylites (Div. Huḏ. 83,3). The existence of the variant ḫarḏal (with ḏ instead of d) arouses the suspicion that it is from Syr.
▪ Jeffery1938, 122: »Both passages [in the Qurʔān] are reminiscent of the [Grk] hōs kókkon sinápeōs of Matt, xvii, 20, etc. – The Muslim authorities take it as an Ar word, though they are in some doubt as to whether it should be ḫardal or ḫarḏal. Fraenkel, Fremdw, 141, has shown, however, that the word is a borrowing from Aram ḥardāl; Syr ḥarḏᵊlā. The probabilities are in favour of its being from the Syr ḥarḏᵊlā, which as a matter of fact translates sínapi in the Peshitta text of Matt. xvii, 20, etc., and occurs also in Christian Palestinian.¹ The borrowing will have been early for the word is used in the old poems, e.g. Dīwān Hudhayl, xcvii, 11.«
▪ Any relation between ḪRDL_1 ‘mustard (seeds)’ and ḪRDL_2 ^†ḫardala ‘to cut into big pieces’? The latter may belong to a group of roots that seem to be derived from, or extensions of, a bi-consonantal basis ↗*ḪR- ‘to split, mince, chop, throw into disorder, confuse, spoil’, to which also belong ↗ḪRBṬ, ↗ḪRBQ, ↗ḪRṬ, ↗ḪRQ, ↗ḪRM. Mustard, then, could be *‘the crushed, grinded seeds’.

1. Schulthess, Lex, 69.

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