Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Jeffery1938: »It occurs only in an early Meccan Sūra in a passage describing the delights of Paradise.
The exegetes were quite at a loss to explain the word. Zam. says that it refers to ʕabqar, a town of the Jinn, which is the home of all wonderful things, and Ṭab., while telling us that ʕabqarī is the same as zarābī or dībāǧ states that the Arabs called every wonderful thing ʕabqarī.
It seems to be an Iranian word. Addai Sher, 114, suggests that it the Pers ābkār, i.e. āb kār, meaning ‘something splendid’, from āb ‘splendour’ and kār ‘something made’. That would be Phlv āb ‘lustre, splendour’¹ (cf. Skt. ābʰā) and kār ‘labour, affair’² from Av kār (cf. Skt. kār),³ so Phlv ābkār would mean a ‘splendid or gorgeous piece of work’. It must be admitted, however, that this derivation seems very artificial.«

1. PPGl, 87, and cf. Horn, Grundriss, 3. 2. West, Glossary, 194, and Horn, Grundriss, 831. 3. Bartholomae, AIW, 444 ff.

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