Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ The name for olives and the olive tree [v1-v2] is not to be confused with the Ar name of the Chinese town Quánzhōu, from which a certain kind of silk (satin) was imported [v3].
▪ [v1-v2] : »Olives and their oil […] have been used as a food and medicine since ancient times. In the Qurʔān, Sūrat al-Tīn, 95:1, we have an introductory oath “By the fig and the olive…”. / Olive oil has long featured in folk medicine, continuing up to the present time. It has the authority of the Prophet, for it is “from a blessed tree”, and is recommended in particular for erysipelas, itch, ulcers, and skin eruptions (Medicine of the Prophet, tr. Johnstone, 227). In Persia of the 1930s, it was “much used in magical rites”. […] Modern Western use is mainly culinary, but also as eardrops and in compound oils.« – Art. »Zaytūn, 1.« (P.C. Johnstone), in EI².
▪ [v3] : The name of the Chinese town is perh. the etymon, via its Ar name Zaytūn, or Zītūn, of Eur words for a certain textile,

hist

[v1-v2]
▪ eC7 zaytūn 1 (olives) Q 95:1 wa’l-tīni wa’l-zaytūni ‘by the figs and the olives’; 2 (olive trees) Q 16:11 yunbitu la-kum bi-hī ’l-zarʕa wa’l-zaytūna wa’l-naḫīla wa’l-ʔaʕnāba ‘with it He grows for you plants, olives, palms, vines’. – ▪ eC7 zaytūnaẗ (olive tree) Q 24:35 yūqadu min šaǧaraẗin mubārakaẗin zaytūnaẗin ‘fuelled from a blessed olive tree’
▪ Cf. also ↗zayt.

[v3]
»Zaytūn, or more probably Zītūn, the name given in the later Arabic geographers (Ibn Saʕīd al-Maġribī, who flourished in the 7th/13th century, being apparently the first to mention it) and in Muslim travellers like Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (who landed there after his Chinese voyage of ca. 1346-7) to a great commercial port of China. It is usually identified as Ch’üan-chou or Quanzhou [Quánzhōu] in the modern Fukien or Fujian [Fújiàn] province, facing the Formosa strait [▪ …] or possibly as the nearby Chang-chou or Zhangzhou near Amoy in this same province [▪ …]. In Sung and Yüan times (12th-14th centuries) it had a flourishing colony of Arab and Persian Muslim merchants, who lived in a separate urban area of their own with all necessary buildings for the practice of their cult and for the meeting together of Ṣūfīs, whilst the Christian community had its own suffragan bishopric there under the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Khānbalīḳ or Peking (one incumbent of Zaytūn is mentioned as Andrew of Perugia) and Franciscan convents.« – Art. »Zaytūn« (C.E. Bosworth), in EI².

cogn

▪ DRS 8 (1999)#ZYT-1 Ug zt ‘olive’, Hbr zayit, EmpAram zyt, TargAram Syr Mand nAram zayatā ‘olive, olivier’, Ar zayt ‘huile’, zaytūn, Mhr zaytūn Jib zetun ‘olive, olivier’, Soq zeyt ‘huile d’olive’, Gz zayt, Te zet, Tña zäyti, Amh Gur Har zäyt ‘olive, olivier; huile d’olive’.

disc

▪ [v1-v2] : see above, section CONC, as well as ↗zayt.
▪ [v3] ʔaṭlas al-Zaytūn : cf. R. Laffitte, SELEFA Séance du 19/06/2014.

west

▪ [v1-v2]
▪ Lokotsch1927#2187: Ar zaytūn ‘olives’, n.un. zaytūnaẗ ‘olive’, + Ar art. al- > Span aceituna, Port azeitona ‘Olive’. From Tu zeytin : Serb zejtin, Russ zitin ‘Baumöl’. – Cf. also ↗zayt.
▪ Tu zeytin ‘olive(s)’ (1303 Codex Cumanicus), from Ar zaytūn ‘id.’ < Ar zayt ‘(olive) oil’ < Aram zeytā ‘id.’, akin to Hbr zayt and Phoen zyt ‘id.’ – Nişanyan_20Aug2015.

[v3]
▪ Lokotsch1927#2188: Ar zaytūn : medieval name for the big Chinese trade port Tseutung oder Tswan-tschou-fu in Fokien [see above, section HIST]. The name was eponymous for a certain type of textile, namely Ar ʔaṭlas zaytūn ‘Zaytunic satin’. Preceded by the article al-, the Ar n.pr.loc. gave Sp aceituni, setuni, mFr zatony, Fr satin, mIt zetani, It zetanino, setino [under influence of seta ‘silk’]; Engl satin, Ge Satin. Hirth ChinFW 204/205 remarks that Cantonese silk factories still were producing a textile known to this day under the name of ssū-tuan, Cantonese szetün ‘silk atlas’. »It seems that Ar traders confused the name of this textile with that of their own trading colony, Zaytūn, which had become famous already before Canton.« – Cf. however the following.
▪ Engl satin (mC14), »from oFrench satin (C14), perh. from Arabic (ʔaṭlas) zaytūnī, lit. ‘(satin) from Zaytūn ’, a Chinese city, perh. modern Quanzhou in Fukien province, southern China, a major port in the Middle Ages, with a resident community of European traders. The form of the word perhaps influenced in Fr by Lat seta ‘silk’. – OED finds the Ar connection etymologically untenable and takes the Fr word straight from Lat« – EtymOnline.

deriv

► ʔaḥad al-zaytūn, n., Palm Sunday (Chr.); ǧabal al-~, n., Mount of Olives (Jerusalem)
► zaytūnaẗ, pl. ‑āt, n.f., 1 olive tree; 2 olive | ǧāmiʕ al-~, n., the Zaytouna Mosque (large mosque and university in Tunis)
► zaytūnī, adj., olivaceous, olive-colored, olive-green; (pl. ‑ūn), n., student of the Great Mosque of Tunis
► zaytūniyyaẗ, var. ʔaḥad al-zaytūniyyaẗ, n.f., Palm Sunday (Copt. Chr.)

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