Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ While Jeffery1938, and after him also Rolland2014a, assume an origin in mPers zūr ‘lie, falsehood, fiction’, the items given in DRS as cognates suggest a Sem etymology that connects ‘lie, untruth, falsehood’ to an original value *‘to turn aside, turn away, be averse, inclined, slanting, oblique, crooked, curved’, cf. ↗zawar.
▪ Cheung2017rev: prob. a direct borrowing from mPers zūr ‘id., deceit’. For details, see below, section DISC.
▪ On the Qurʔānic šahādaẗ al-zūr ‘perjury, false testimony’ (Q 22:30), cf. Raimund Köbert, »Die šahādat az-zūr «, Der Islam, 34 (1959): 94 ff.
▪ …

hist

▪ eC7 zūr (falsehood, perjury, false testimony) Q 58:2 wa-ʔinna-hum la-yaqūlūna munkaran min-a ’l-qawli wa-zūran ‘indeed they utter abominable (or, blameworthy) words and falsehood’

cogn

▪ (?) DRS 8 (1999)#ZW/YR-1 (a) Akk zāru ‘tordre, être tordu’, Hbr JP zār ‘s’écarter de’, zawwēr ‘rouler’, Ar zawira ‘être penché, courbé; aller en biais’, (b) zāra ‘mentir, accuser faussement’, zawwara ‘altérer, falsifier, défigurer, embellir, orner’, zūr ‘mensonge vanité’, (c) zuraẗ ‘fois’, S Ar zāra ‘quelquefois’, Syr zawar ‘regarder de travers’, Gz Te Arg zora, Tña Amh Gur zorä, Gaf zärä ‘tourner, aller autour’, Gz zawwara ‘durer, subsister’; Amh zäwärwärra ‘vagabond; tortueux (chemin)’, zəwərwər ‘en vrille’, žort ‘hérisson’. – (d)? Akk zēru ‘ne pas aimer, haïr, éviter; abandonner’, zayyār ‘ennemi’, Hbr zār, Phoen oYa zr ‘étranger, d’autrui’, TargAram zār ‘loger chez qn’. – (e) Ar zīr ‘qui est en colère’; (f) zāra ‘visiter (un lieu saint)’, MġrAr zār ‘rendre visite’; zyāra ‘visite’; Qat štzr ‘tenter de visiter’, Mhr Jib Ḥrs zōr ‘visiter’, Te Amh Gur zäyyärä ‘visiter, aller en pèlerinage’, Te təzäyyärä ‘être fatigué, épuisé’. – (g) Ar zawr : ombre que l’on voit dans le sommeil.

disc

▪ Jeffery1938: Ar zūr »is linked with idolatry in Q 22:30, but in the other passages is quite colourless. – The usual theory of the philologers is that it is derived from zawwara though this is clearly a denominative, and that the authorities felt some difficulty with the word is clear from LA, v: 426. – Fraenkel, Fremdw, 273, suggested that it was from [Hbr] zr.¹ There is a Hbr word zārâ ‘loathsome thing’ from √ZWR ‘to be loathsome’, but it seems hardly possible to derive the Ar from this. It would seem rather to be of Iranian origin. Pers zūr is ‘lie, falsehood’, which Vullers, Lex, ii: 158, gives, it is true, as a loan-word from Ar. He is certainly wrong, however, for not only does the word occur in mPers both simply as zūr, a ‘lie, falsehood, fiction’,² and in compounds as zūr-gukāsīh ‘false evidence, perjury’³ and in the Pazend zur ‘a lie’,⁴ but also in the oPers of the Behistun inscription (where we read (iv: 63-4) naiy draužana āham, naiy zārakara āham ‘I was no liar, nor was I an evil-doer’, and further (iv: 65) naiy… zūra akunavam ‘I did no wrong’),⁵ and in the Av zūrōžata.⁶ From mPers the word was borrowed into Arm, where we find zowr ‘false, wrong’,⁷ which enters into several compounds, e.g. zraban ‘caluminator’, zrkankʽ ‘injustice’, etc., so that it was probably directly from mPers that it came into Arabic.«
▪ Rolland2014a: from mPers zūr ‘lie, falsehood, fiction’, akin to Av zūrah ‘to deceive, cheat, lie, betray’.
▪ While Jeffery1938 and Rolland2014a regard zūr ‘lie, untruth, falsehood’ as a borrowing from mPers (see preceding paragraphs), another tradition (cf. DRS) sees it (as also the vb. ↗zāra ‘to visit’) as development from an original ‘to incline, turn aside, etc.’, represented in MSA ↗zawar ‘inclination, obliqueness; squint’, ĭzwarra ‘to turn aside’, ʔazwarᵘ ‘inclined, slanting, oblique; crooked, curved; squint-eyed, cross-eyed’ (≙ DRS #ZW/YR-1b).
▪ In MSA, zūr and derivatives show an exclusively negative meaning (e.g., zawwara, vb. II, ‘to forge, falsify, counterfeit; to fake, simulate’), while in earlier times it was often used with a positive connotation; zawwara could then also mean ^†‘to set right; to improve; to embellish’.

1. Vide also Beit. Ass, iii: 67, where he says: »Das koranische zūr habe ich in dringendem Verdacht aus der Fremde entlehnt zu sein. Schon die verschiedenartigen Erklärungen der Araber sind auffallend.« 2. e.g. Gosht-i-Fryānō, iii: 29. 3. E.g. Ardā Vīrāf, lv: 6; xlv: 5. 4. Vide Shikand, Glossary, p. 275; Salemann, Manichaeische Studien, i: 80. 5. Spiegel, in the Glossary to his Altpersische Keilinschriften, p. 243, translates zūra by ‘Gewalt’, but Hübschmann, ZDMG, xlvi: 329, rightly corrects him. 6. Bartholomae, AIW, 1698; Horn, Grundriss, 149: § 674. 7. Hübschmann, Arm. Gramm, i: 151.

west

–

deriv

► šahādat al-zūr, n.f., false testimony

► zawwara, vb. II, to forge, falsify, counterfeit (s.th.); to fake, simulate: denom. D-stem, declar./caus.
► ^BP#3672tazwīr, n., forgery, falsification: vn. II | ~ fī ’l-sanadāt, n., falsification of documents.
► muzawwir, pl. ‑ūn, n., 1 forger: PA II. 2 ↗zāra.
► muzawwar, adj., 1 forged, false, counterfeit; 2 obtained by swindle, faked: PP II.

For other values of the root, cf. ↗zawr, ↗zīr, ↗zūr_2, ↗zawar, and (for the general picture) ↗ZWR. – Cf. also ↗ZYR.

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