Bibliotheca Polyglotta

abstention, abstinence, abstemiousness; ‎fasting, fast; al-ṣ. ‏fasting during the month of Ramadan, one of the five principal duties of the ‎Muslim – WehrCowan1979.

conc

Most probably a loan from Syr ṣawmā ‘fasting’ (as Retsö, “Aramaic/Syriac Loanwords”, in EALL holds¹ ), rather than from Hbr ṣōm ‘fasting’ (as Schall1982 assumed).

1. Following Jeffrey1938.

hist

▪ eC7 Q 2:178, 2:183-185, 2:187, 2:196, 4:92, 5:89, 5:95, 19:26, 58:4.

cogn

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disc

▪ Jeffery 1938: »The verb occurs in ii, 180, 181, and the participle in xxxiii, 35, [the vb.] ṣāma being obviously denominative from ṣawm. – It will be noticed that the passages are all late, and that the word is a technical religious term, which was doubtless borrowed from some outside source. That there were Jewish influences on the Qur’ānic teaching about fasting has been pointed out by Wensinck, Joden, 120 ff.,¹ while Sprenger, Leben, iii, 55 ff., has emphasized the Christian influence thereon. In Nöldeke-Schwally, i, 179-180, attention is drawn to the similarity of the Qur’ānic teaching with fasting as practised among the Manichaeans, and Margoliouth, Early Development, 149, thinks its origin is to be sought in some system other than the Jewish or Christian, though doubtless influenced by both, so it is not easy to determine the origin of the word till we have ascertained the origin of the custom. – Fraenkel, Vocab, 20, would derive it from the Hbr ṣōm,² but it is more likely to have come from Aram ṢWM, Syr ṣawmā, which is also the source of the Eth [Gz] ṣōma (Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge, 36), and the Arm com.³ The Syr form is the nearer phonologically to the Ar and may thus be the immediate source, as Mingana, Syriac Influence, 86, urges. The word would seem to have been in use in Arabia before Muḥammad’s day,⁴ but whether fasting was known in other Arab communities than those of the Jews and Christians is uncertain.⁵ «

1. Cf. Schwally, Idioticon, 74. 2. Grünebaum, ZDMG, xl, 275, is uncertain whether from Hbr or Aram; cf. also Pautz, Offenbarung, 150, n. 3. 3. Hübschmann, Arm. Gramm, i, 306. 4. Cheikho, Naṣrāniyya, 179. 5. Schwally, Idioticon, 74 n.: “Natürlich müssen auch die heidnischen Araber das Fasten als religiöse Übung gehabt haben, aber das vom Islam eingeführte Fasten empfanden sie als ein Novum.”

west

–

deriv

► ṣāma, ṣum-, ū (ṣawm, ṣiyām), vb. I, to abstain (ʕan from s.th.); to abstain from food, drink, and sexual intercourse; to fast: denominative
► ^BP#3470ṣiyām, n., fasting, fast: vn. I
► ṣiyāmī, adj., Lenten fare: nsb-formation, from prededing vn.
► ṣāʔim pl. ‑ūn, ṣuwwam, ṣuyyam, ṣiyām, adj., fasting: PA I; n., faster, one who fasts: nominalized adj.

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