Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Of unclear origin. Several etymologies have been suggested. Freytag1830 and Ḍannāwī2004 assume a Pers source, which could be in line with the fact that DRS 10 (2012) only give E/GulfAr and modSAr cognates. On the other hand, the word does not seem uncommon in EgAr and SudAr (BehnstedtWoidich2011). In contrast, Landberg1920 saw ḫawr related to ġawr, while BDB1906 would not exclude kinship with items from the root √ḪWR but also consider a Hbr word as cognate. Farthest, as often, goes Cohen1969, assuming an AfrAs origin.

hist

▪ HDAL: earliest attestation in this sense 709 AD (al-ʕAǧǧāǧ).

cogn

▪ DRS 10 (2012) #ḪWR-3 Ḏ̣ofAr ‘golfe, embouchure d’un fleuve’, ʕOmAr ḥōr ‘port’, DaṯAr ḫawr ‘port, golfe’; Mhr ḫawr, Soq ḫōr, ḥōr ‘baie, embouchure’, Jib ḫohr ‘bras de mer’.
▪ Cohen1969 #162: Eg ḫrw ‘lowland, depression’, Copt (B) ḫel(l)ot [Copt (S) šlōt – Westerndorf2008: < Eg ḫ3r(w)ṯ, Dem ẖlt] ‘valley, rift, river’; Berb (Tom) égərəw ‘large river, lake, see’, tēgərt ‘rivulet, brook’; Bed kŭān, Bil kŭra, Ch aḳual ‘river’; Som hūr ‘lake’ (< Ar ?), ḫōri ‘river bank, rivulet, brook’. – ? Hbr ḳor ‘to flow’ (?), Gz ḳʷallā ‘lowland’ (valley of a large river), Amh kʷərē ‘pond, pool’.
▪ BehnstedtWoidich i (2011):424 #143 – In Kordofan, ḫōr typically means ‘river’. The ClassAr meanings (Lane: ‘low, or depressed, ground or land… between two elevated parts… an inlet from a sea or large river, entering into the land… a place, or channel, where water pours into a sea or large river”) are found in Luxor (BehnstedtWoidich1994), while Qāsim2002 (QAS) notes ‘valley, graben’ for the Sudan (hence also kóóru ‘river’ im Ki-Nubi/Kenia – Heine1982).

disc

▪ In pre-MSA texts, ḫawr is attested as ‘tract of land between two hills, valley; gulf, bay, gulf; mouth of a river’.
▪ Of Pers origin? – According to Ḍannāwī2004, it is perh. borrowed from a Pers »هور« (hor ? – unidentifiable in my Pers dictionaries). Freytag1830, too, thought it was a »vox Persica«, i.e., a borrowing from Pers; Steingass1892 does not have anything that might fit this assumption, but VahmanPedersen1998 has nPers ḫor ‘mouth of a river, small bay’; however, this may be in itself an Arabism, as is assumed in Redhouse’s Tu–Engl dictionary of 1890 where »khavr, vulg. khor ‘bay, strait, channel; river mouth on the sea, harbor; low-lying bottom where water is apt to collect« is marked »A.«, indicating Ar origin]. The Pers connection can seem plausible in the light of the E/Gulf Ar and modSAr forms given in DRS. But compare BehnstedtWoidich2011 (see COGN) who found that the word is common also in Egypt and Sudan.
▪ Landberg1920 identified ḫawr with ↗ġawr ‘bottom; declivity, depression; graben, valley’.
▪ BDB1906 compared Hbr ḥōr ‘hollow’ (√ḤWR; Klein1987: ḥūr ‘hole’, ḥōr, ḥôr ‘hole, aperture’) with Ar ḫawr, rendered as »hollow, depressed ground between hills«, which, however, is also seen as co-original with ↗ḫāra (rendered as »to bend, turn, incline, of man be weak«), in this way equating also ḪWR_1 and ḪWR_2). In contrast, a connection with the n.prop.terr. ↗Ḥawrān is seen as unlikely.
▪ The AfrAs dimension suggested by Cohen1969 sounds rather far-fetched at first sight. However, in the light of the evidence given by BehnstedtWoidich2011 for Egypt and the Sudan, at least the Eg items could perh. be genuine cognates.

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