Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Jeffery1938 (summary): »[…] it is from the Eth [Gz] śayṭān […] that many scholars have sought to derive the Ar šayṭān. Whether this is so it is now perhaps impossible to determine, but we may take it as certain that the word was in use long before Muḥammad’s day, and he in his use of it was undoubtedly influenced by Christian, probably Abyssinian Christian, usage.«
▪ BAH2008: »Philologists derive the word either from the root √ŠṬN, associated with the basic concepts of ‘fastening tightly; being exceedingly, or audaciously, proud, corrupt, rebellious or insolent’ or from the root √ŠYṬ associated with the basic concepts of ‘singeing, scorching, burning’. Because the word existed in Ar, Syr, Aram and Eth [Gz] long before the advent of Islam, it has been suggested that it is the source of various other derivations.«
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hist

▪ eC7 Of frequent occurrence in the Q, cf., e.g., 2:36,168,208,268,275, 4:83, etc. – It occurs (a) as a personal name for the Evil One—[Grk] ho Satanâs, cf. 2:36, 4:38, etc., (b) in the pl. šayāṭīn for the hosts of evil, cf. 2:102, 6:121, etc.; (c) metaphorically of evil leaders among men, cf. 2:14, 3:175, 6:112, etc.; (d) perhaps sometimes merely for mischievous spirits, cf. 6:71; 21:82, 23:97.
▪ eC7 1 (devil, demon) Q 4:117 ʔin yadʕūna min dūnihī ʔillā ʔināṯan wa‑ʔin yadʕūna ʔillā šayṭānan marīdan ‘they only invoke a rebellious devil’; 2 (devilish, evil impulse or company) Q 43:36 wa‑man yaʕšu ʕan ḏikri ’l‑raḥmāni nuqayyiḍ lahū šayṭānan fa‑huwa lahū qarīnun ‘whoever is blind to the remembrance of the Merciful, We assign to him a devil and then he becomes his comrade for him’; 3 (jinn, powerful spirits) Q 21:82 wa‑min‑a ’l‑šayāṭīni man yaġūṣūna lahū ‘and of the devils some dive for him’; 4 (devilish beings, fiends, evil forces) Q 6:112 wa‑ka‑ḏālika ǧaʕalnā li‑kulli nabiyyin ʕaduwwan šayāṭīna ’l‑ʔinsi wa’l‑ǧinni ‘in the same way We assigned to each prophet an enemy, the evil humans and the evil jinn’; 5 (with def.art.: the Devil, Satan, Iblis) Q 19:44 yā‑ʔabat‑i lā taʕbud‑i ’l‑šayṭāna ʔinna ’l‑šayṭāna kāna lil‑raḥmāni ʕaṣiyyan ‘father, do not worship Satan – Satan is a rebel against the Merciful’.
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cogn

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disc

▪ Jeffery1938, 187-90: »The Muslim authorities were uncertain whether to derive the word from šaṭana ‘to be far from’, or from šāṭa ‘to burn with anger’ (cf. Rāġib, Mufradāt, 261, and LA, xvii, 104; TA, ix, 253). The form FayʕāL, however, is rather difficult. It is true, as the philologers state, that we do get forms like ḥayrān ‘perplexed’, but this is from √ḤYR where the n is no part of the root, and, like the haymān, ġaymān quoted as parallels in LA, is really a form FaʕLān not FayʕāL, and is a diptote whereas šayṭān is a triptote. The real analogy would be with such forms as hayḏār ‘babbler’, hayṣār ‘mangled’, hayḏām ‘courageous’, quoted by Brockelmann, Grundriss, i, 344, but these are all rare adjectival forms and hardly parallel the Qurʔānic šayṭān. / Now we learn from the Lexicons that šayṭān has the meaning of ‘snake’ (ḥayyaẗ lahū ʕurf) (LA, xvii, 104, 105), and we find this meaning in the old poets, e.g., in a Rejez poet […] and in a verse of Ṭarafaẗ […]. / Moreover, we find Šayṭān used as a personal name in ancient Arabia.¹ The Aġānī, xv, 53, mentions al-Šayṭān b. Bakr b. ʕAwf among the ancestors of ʕAlqamaẗ, and Ibn Durayd mentions a ʕĀhān b. al-Šayṭān (240, 1.4) and a Šayṭān b. al-Ḥāriṯ (243, 1.3).² As a tribal name we find a sub-tribe of the Banū Kindaẗ called in Banū Šayṭān in Aġānī, xx, 97, and in Yāqūt, Muʕǧam, iii, 356, we have mention of a branch of the Banū Tamīm of the same name. This use is probably totemistic in origin, for we find several totem clans among the ancient Arabs, such as the Banū Ḥayyaẗ who in the early years of Islam were the ruling caste of the Ṭayyiʔ (Aġānī, xvi, 50, 1.7), the Banū ʔAfʕà (Hamdānī, 91, 1.16), the Banū Ḥanaš, a sub-tribe of ʔAws (Ibn Durayd, 260, 2), etc.³ The serpent was apparently an old Sem totem,⁴ and as a tribal name associated with one of the many branches of the Snake totem. Van Vloten and Goldziher take šayṭān to be an old Ar word.⁵ / That the Arabs believed serpents to have some connection with supernatural powers, was pointed out by Nöldeke in the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, i, 412 ff., and van Vloten has shown that they were connected with demons and evil,⁶ so that the use of the name šayṭān for the Evil One could be taken as a development from this. The use of šayṭān in the Qurʔān in the sense of mischievous spirits, where it is practically equivalent to ↗ǧinn, can be paralleled from the old poetry, and would fit this early serpent connection, but the theological connotations of Šayṭān as leader of the hosts of evil is obviously derived from Muḥammad’s Jewish or Christian environments. In the Rabbinic writings [Hbr] Śāṭān is used in this sense, as are the Grk Satân and the Syr sāṭānā.⁷ From the Syr come the Arm satanay,⁸ and also the Phlv ideogram ???? (PPGl, 209), the Šidān of the Paikuli fragment,⁹ iii,2, but it is from the Eth [Gz] śayṭān which occurs beside sayṭān for [Grk] ho diábolos, that many scholars have sought to derive the Ar šayṭān.¹⁰ Whether this is so it is now perhaps impossible to determine, but we may take it as certain that the word was in use long before Muḥammad’s day,¹¹ and he in his use of it was undoubtedly influenced by Christian, probably Abyssinian Christian, usage. (Fischer, Glossar, 165, thinks that the word is from [Hbr] śāṭān but influenced by the genuine Ar šayṭān meaning ‘demon’.)«
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1. Vide Goldziher, ZDMG, xlv, 685, and Abhandlungen, i, 106; van Vloten in Feestbundel aan de Goeje, 37 ff.; Horovitz, KU, 120. 2. So we find a Šayṭān b. MDLJ of the tribe of Ǧušām (TA, iv, 29 ) and in ʔUsd al-Ġābaẗ, i, 343, we find a man Farwaẗ b. al-Šayṭān, while in the Dīwān of Ṭufayl (ed. Krenkow, iii, 37), there is mention of a certain Šayṭān b. al-Ḥakam. 3. Vide the discussion in Robertson Smith, Kinship, 229 ff. 4. Vide Robertson Smith in Journal of Philology, ix, 99 ff.; G. B. Gray, Hebrew Proper Names, 91, and Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, i, 257-292. 5. Goldziher, Abhandlungen, i, 10; van Vloten, Feestebundel aan de Goeje, 38 ff. Also Sprenger, Leben, ii, 242, n. 2. Wellhausen, however, Reste, 157, n., thinks that this has been substituted for some earlier name and is not itself an old Ar name. 6. Vide his essay “Dämonen, Geister und Zauber bei den alten Arabern” in WZKM, vii, particularly pp. 174-8, and see Goldziher, Abhandlungen, i, 6 ff. 7. SṬNā is the form on the incantation bowls, cf. Montgomery, Aramaic Incantation Texts, Glossary, 296. 8. Hübschmann, Arm. Gramm, i, 316. 9. Herzfeld, Paikuli, Glossary, p. 243. Of the same origin is also the Soghdian s’t’nh (Henning, Manichäisches Beitbuch, 1937, p. 142). 10. Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge, 47; Pautz, Offenbarung, 48; Ahrens, Muhammed, 92; Rudolph, Abhängigkeit, 34; Margoliouth, ERE, x, 540. Praetorius, ZDMG, lxi, 619-620, thinks the Eth [Gz] is derived from the Ar, but see Nöldeke, op. cit., against him. 11. Wellhausen, Reste, 157, and see Horovitz, KU, 121.

west

▪ Engl Satan, proper name of the supreme evil spirit in Christianity, oEngl Satan, from lLat Satan (in Vulgate in OT only), from Grk Satanâs, from Hbr śāṭān ‘adversary, one who plots against another’, from śāṭan ‘to show enmity to, oppose, plot against’, from root ś-ṭ-n ‘one who opposes, obstructs, or acts as an adversary’. / In Septuagint (Grk) usually translated as diábolos ‘slanderer’, literally ‘one who throws (something) across’ the path of another (see devil), though epíboulos ‘plotter’ is used once – EtymOnline.
▪ (Huehnergard2011:) Engl Satan, from Hbr śāṭān ‘adversary, Satan’, from śāṭan ‘to accuse, act as adversary’; shaitan, from Ar šayṭān ‘Satan’, from Gz śayṭān, from Aram sāṭānā, from Hbr śāṭān (see above).

deriv

► tašayṭana, vb. II, to behave like a devil: t-stem, denom.

► šayṭānī, adj., satanic, devilish, fiendish; demonic, demoniac, hellish, infernal: nisba formation.
► šayṭanaẗ, n.f., devilry, villainy, dirty trick: vn., denom. from *šayṭana, vb. I.

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