Bibliotheca Polyglotta

Although the underlying Sem root itself is not absent from Ar, the language does not seem to have had a term derived from it before speakers of Ar came into contact with Christians who produced and traded in it. Following Jeffrey, we assume that the word is from Syr ḥamrā ‘wine’. Cf., however, Kogan2011: from protWSem *ḫamr‑ ‘wine’.
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hist

▪ eC7 Q 2:219, 5:90-91, 12:36,41, 47:15 ‘wine’.
▪ eC7 1 (intoxifating drink, spirits, wine in particular) Q 2:219 yasʔalūnaka ʕan‑i ’l‑ḫamri wa’l‑maysiri qul fīhimā ʔiṯmun kabīrun ‘they ask you about intoxicants and gambling: say, “There is great sin in both”’; 2 (grapes and other fruits taht may be fermented into wine) Q 12:36 qāla ʔaḥaduhumā ʔinnī ʔarānī ʔaʕṣiru ḫamran ‘one of them said: I see myself pressing grapes’

cogn

▪ Out of the items mentioned in DRS 10 (2012)#ḪMR-1, there is only Syr ḥamrā ‘wine’ that is directly relevant here, since the word probably is a loan from there. For the wider context of ‘to ferment, leaven’, to which ḫamr belongs via this loan, cf. ↗ḫamara_1.

disc

▪ Jeffery1938, 125: »The word is very commonly used in the old poetry, but as Guidi saw,¹ it is not a native word, but one imported along with the article. The Ar ḫamara means ‘to cover’, ‘to conceal’ [↗ḫamara_2 ], and from this was formed ḫimār ‘a muffler’, the pl. of which, ḫumur, occurs in Sūra xxiv, 31. In the sense of ‘to give wine to’, it is denominative.² – Its origin was doubtless the Aram חמרא = Syr ḥamrā which is of very common use. The Hbr ḥämär is poetical (BDB, 330) and probably of Aram origin.³ It is also suggestive that many of the other forms from ḫmr are clearly of Aram origin, e.g. ḥᵃmīrā ‘leaven’, gives [Ar] ḫamīr ‘ferment, leaven’, and Arm ḫmor ‘yeast'⁴ [Syr] ḥammārā ‘a wineseller is [Ar] ḫammār; [Syr] ḥamrān is [Ar] ḫamrān, etc. – The probabilities are all in favour of the word having come into Ar from a Christian source, for the wine trade was largely in the hands of Christians (vide supra, p. 21), and Jacob even suggests that Christianity spread among the Arabs in some parts along the routes of the wine trade.⁵ Most of the Ar terms used in the wine trade seem to be of Syriac origin, and ḫamr itself is doubtless an early borrowing from the Syr ḥamrā.«

1. Della Sede, 597, and note Bell, Origin, 145. 2. Fraenkel, Fremdw, 161. 3. We now have the word, however, in the Ras Shamra texts. 4. Lagarde, Arm. Stud, 901; Hübschmann, ZDMQ, xlvi, 238, and Arm. Gramm, i, 305. 5. Beduinenleben, 99. Fraenkel, Fremdw, 181, notes the curious fact that in early Ar the commonest word for merchant, viz. [[tājir|tājir ]], has the special significance of ‘wine merchant’, on which D. H. Müller remarks, WZKM, i, 27: »sie zeigt dass die Civilization im Alterthum wie heute erst mit der Einführung berauschender Getränke begonnen hat."

west

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deriv

► ḫamraẗ, n.f., wine:.
► ḫamrī, adj., golden brown, reddish brown, bronze-coloured: nsb-adj; actually, ‘wine-coloured’.
► ḫamriyyaẗ, n.f., wine poem, bacchanalian verse: actually a f. nisba adj., ‘the one related to, or about, wine’.
► ḫumār, n., aftereffect of intoxication, hang-over:.
► ḫammār, n., wine merchant, keeper of a wineshop: n.prof.; according to Jeffrey1938 from Syr ḥammārā ‘a wineseller’.
► ḫammāraẗ, n.f., wineshop, tavern; bar: ints. n.loc.
► ḫimmīr, n., winebibber, drunkard, tippler, sot: ints. n. formation, pej.
► maḫmūr, adj., drunk, intoxicated, inebriated: PP I.
► muḫtamir, adj., 1 fermenting, fermented; 2 alcoholic: PA VIII.

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