Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ eC7 (‘idolatry’) Q 2:256, 257; 4:51, 60, 76; 5:60; 16:36; 39:17. – 1 ([generic for] false deity/deities) Q 2:256 fa-man yakfur bi’l-ṭāġūti wa-yuʔmin bi’l-lāhi fa-qad-i ’stamsaka bi’l-ʕurwaẗi ’l-wuṯqà ‘so whoever rejects false gods and believes in God has taken grasp of the firmest link’; 2 ([generic for] evil powers; variously named by the interpreters as: the Devil, diviners, enchanters, any head or leader in error, the idol al-Lāt or Kaʕb b. al-ʔAšraf, a Jewish man who directed hostilities against the new religion) Q 4:60 yurīdūna ʔan yataḥākamū ʔilà ’l-ṭāġūti wa-qad ʔumirū ʔan yakfurū bi-hī ‘they desire to seek the arbitration of false idols (or, leaders of disbelievers) when they have been ordered to reject them?’

cogn

disc

▪ Jeffery1938: »This curious word is used by Muḥammad to indicate an alternative to the worship of Allah, as Rāġib, Mufradāt, 307, recognizes. Men are warned to ‘serve Allah and avoid ṭāġūt’ (16:36, 39:17); those who disbelieve are said to fight in the way of ṭāġūt and have ṭāġūt as their patron (4:76; 2:257); some seek oracles from ṭāġūt (4:60), and the People of the Book are reproached because some of them, though they have a Revelation, yet believe in ṭāġūt (4:51, 5:60). / It is thus clearly a technical religious term, but the Commentators know nothing certain about it. From Ṭab. and Bagh. on ii, 257, we learn that some thought it meant al-šayṭān, others al-sāḥir or al-kāhin, others ʔawṯān or ʔaṣnām, and some thought it a name for al-Lāt and al-ʕUzzà. The general opinion, however, is that it is a genuine Ar word, a form FaʕLūt from ṭaġà ‘to go beyond the limit’ (LA, xix, 232; TA , x, 225, and Rāġib, op. cit.). This is plausible, but hardly satisfactory, and we learn from al-Suyūṭī, Itq, 322; Mutaw, 37, that some of the early authorities recognized it as a loan-word from Abyssinian. / Geiger, 56, sought its origin in the Rabbinic ṭāʕûṯ ‘error’ which is sometimes used for idols, as in the Jerusalem Talmud, Sanh, x, 28d , ʔwy l-km w-l-ṭʕwt-km ‘woe to you and to your idols’, and whose cognate ṭʕwtā is frequently used in the Targums for ‘idolatry’¹ a meaning easily developed from the primary verbal meaning of ṭʕā ‘to go astray’ (cf. Hbr ṭāʕāʰ, Syr ṭᵊʕā, Ar ṭaġà). / Geiger has had many followers in this theory of a Jewish origin for ṭāġūt,² but others have thought a Christian origin more probable. / Schwally, Idioticon, 38, points out that whereas in Edessene Syr the common form is ṭaʕyūtā meaning ‘error’, yet in the ChrPal dialect we find the form ṭᵊʕūtā,³ which gives quite as close an equivalent as the Targumic ṭāʕūṯā. The closest parallel, however, is the Eth [Gz] ṭāʕot from an unused verbal root ṭʕw (the equivalent of [Hbr] ṭāʕāʰ, Ar ṭaġà), which primitively means ‘defection from the true religion’, and then is used to name any superstitious beliefs, and also is a common word for ‘idols’, translating the [Grk] eídōla of both the LXX and N.T. It is probable, as Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge, 35, notes, that this word itself is ultimately derived from Aram, but we can be reasonably certain that al-Suyūṭī’s authorities were right in giving the Ar word an Abyssinian [Gz] origin.⁴ «
▪ ...
▪ ...

1. Geiger, 203, and see examples in Levy, TW, i, 312. 2. Von Kremer, Ideen, 226, n.; Fraenkel, Vocab, 23; Pautz, Offenbarung, 175; Eickmann, Angelologie, 48; Margoliouth, ERE, vi, 249; Hirschfeld, Jüdische Elemente, 65. 3. Schulthess, Lex, 76; Mingana, Syriac Influence, 85, also holds to a Syr origin for the word. 4. Nöldeke, op. cit., 48. It should be noted, however, that in the incantation texts ṭāʕūṯā means ‘false deity’, which is very close to the Qurʔānic usage. Cf. Montgomery, Aramaic Incantation Texts, p. 290.

west

–

deriv

–

Permanent link

http://www2.hf.uio.no/common/apps/permlink/permlink.php?app=polyglotta&context=record&uid=d9619d16-06ff-11ee-937a-005056a97067

Choose languages

Choose images, etc.

Choose languages

Choose display