Bibliotheca Polyglotta

alms, charitable gift; almsgiving, charity, voluntary contribution of alms, freewill offering; legally prescribed alms tax (Isl. Law) – WehrCowan1979.

conc

▪ As a religious technical term, the word is taken from Hbr ṣdāqāh ‘law, right behaviour, alms’. Sem ṢDQ to which the Hbr etymon belongs, has however successors also in Ar, cf. ↗ṣadaqa and derivatives.
▪ It seems that the word was borrowed in early Islamic times to provide an Islamic counterpart to old Arabian charity as practised by clan/tribe chiefs through individual acts of generosity. Through ṣadaqa, the old ideal/norm could be integrated into Islam in a modified, ‘milder’, less excessive and self-destructive form while at the same time a new notion of collective charity (↗zakāt) could be introduced and was given priority over individual charity. The old Arabian ideals however continued into Islamic times not only as ṣadaqa (↗jūd, ↗karam, ↗saḫāʔ).

hist

▪ eC7 Q 2:196,263, 4:114, 9:103, 58:12 ‘alms, tithes’. Derivatives: (taṣaddaqa) 2:280; 5:45; 12:88, ( ʔaṣṣaddaqa) 4:92; 9:75; 63:10, (muṣaddiq, mutaṣaddiq) e.g. 2:41; 33:35.

cogn

▪ BDB1906: Hbr ṣədāqâh ‘righteousness(also ethically); righteous acts’, TellAm ṣaduq ‘innocent’, Syr zedqṯā ‘alms’.

disc

▪ Jeffery1938, 194: The Qur’anic »[p]assages are all late, and the word is used only as a technical religious term, just like Hbr ṣᵊdāqâh, Phoen ṣdq, Syr zdqā. – The Muslim authorities derive the word from ṣadaqa ‘to be sincere’ and say that alms are so called because they prove the sincerity of one’s faith. The connection of the [word] with √ṢDQ is sound enough, but as a technical word for ‘alms’ there can be no doubt that it came from a Jewish or Christian source. Hirschfeld, Beiträge, 89, argues for a Jewish origin,¹ which is very possible. The Syr zdqā with z for ṣ would seem fatal to a derivation from a Christian source, but in the Christian-Palestinian dialect we find ṣdqā translating [Grk] eleēmosýnē in common use in several forms,² which makes it at least possible that the source of the Ar word is to be found there.«
▪ Pennacchio2014, 168: the word seems to be a borrowing from Hbr ṣᵊdāqâh, »concept spécifique au judaïsme. Il es fréquent dans le texte biblique mais il n’a pas seulement le sens de ‘charité, aumône’. […] C’est dans la littérature rabbinique que ṣədāqā ‘pureté, vertu, équité’ a le sens d’‘aumône’.«³
▪ Kerr2014: »The ‘voluntary donation’ ṣadaqaẗ has a specific meaning and thus is certainly of foreign origin. In Amor, Ug, (older) Hbr, Sab, Gz, etc. this semantic domain encompasses ‘justice, to be righteous, to be documented as true’ (compare the Tzaddik; Sadducee)—from which the classical commentators derived the Ar term. The development of ‘to be righteous’ > ‘that which is right(eous)’ > ‘that which is proper (to give)’ > ‘to give charitably’ > ‘to give a portion, toll’ was completed in Aram. Syr which renders here the /ṣ/ with {z} is less relevant here. However, here we do find a similar semantic development: zadūṯā (<√ZDQ !) ‘beneficium, eleemosyne’, for example, as in Matthew 6:2, where this word expresses the Greek eleēmosýnē […]. The unaltered root √ṢDQ found in WAram is, however, in all likelihood the source of the Ar borrowing. So for example ChrPal ṣdqʔ as well as the Hbr word borrowed by Jewish dialects ṣəḏāqāʰ ‘liberality, especially almsgiving’. Although the exact Aram source of this word is not clear, it is most likely the same one which lent this word into ClassEth [Gz] ṣadəqāt (pl.; sg. ṣadəq). In any case, the particular semantic development of the root √ṢDQ here, from ‘righteousness’ to ‘alms(giving)’ is somewhat convoluted so as to preclude the same semantic development having occurred twice independently. The precedence of this development in Aram certainly shows that it was borrowed by Ar. The fact that it […] seems to have been borrowed from a Jewish WAram dialect could indicate that it is an Islamic continuation of an originally Jewish custom, possibly a relic of Islam’s Jud-Chr origins.«

1. So Fraenkel, Vocab, 20; Sprenger, Leben, ii, 195 n.; Rudolph, Abhängigkeit, 61; Ahrens, Muhammed, 180; von Kremer, Streifzüge, p. ix. 2. Schulthess, Lex, 167; Schwally, Idioticon, 79; and cf. Horovitz, JPN, 212. 3. Author refers to art. “Charity” in Enc.Jud. 5: 338.

west

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deriv

► ṣadaqat al-fiṭr, n., almsgiving at the end of Ramadan (Isl. Law)

► taṣaddaqa, vb. V, to give alms (ʕalà to s.o.); to give as alms, donate (bi‑ s.th., ʕalà to s.o.): denom.

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