Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Jeffery1938: »The philologers differ considerably among themselves over the origin of the name of this tribe. The popular etymology was that they were so called from their trading and profiting (cf. Zam. on the verse and Ibn Hishām, 60). Others derived it from a vb. taqarraša ‘to gather together’ [cf. ↗qaraša_2 ], holding that they were so called from their gathering or assembling at Mecca (cf. LA, viii, 226; Yāqūt, Muʕjam, iv, 79). Another theory derived the name from a tribal ancestor, Qurayš b. Maḫlad, but as it does not explain this name it does not help us much.¹ – The most satisfactory theory is that which derives the word from qarš ‘shark’² [↗qarš_1 ], cf. Zam. on the verse and LA, viii, 226. This is scoffed at by Yāqūt, but is accepted by al-Ṭabarī and al-Damīrī,³ and it may well have been a totemistic tribal name. Nöldeke, Beiträge, 87, accepts this qarš theory, and links the word with the Aram כרשא which occurs in the Talmud, Baba bathra, 74a, for a kind of fish, which Lewysohn thinks means the ‘sun-fish’,⁴ and would derive from the Pers ḫôršîd. It is true that Pers ḫôreš means ‘something eatable’, but ḫôršîd is from the Av hvārə-ḫšaetəm, meaning ‘sol-splendidus’,⁵ and has apparently nothing to do with fish of any kind. Nöldeke suggests with much more probability that it is a shortened form of the Grk karḫarías,⁶ a word which is used for a kind of small shark with pointed teeth, and which Nicander the Colophonian⁷ said was used also for a lamia or a squill.«
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1. From a statement in the Chronicles of Mecca, ii, 133 (ed. Wüstenfeld), we would gather that some thought the name was formed quite arbitrarily from three letters of the alphabet. 2. Or ‘sword-fish’ (Margoliouth, Mohammed, 9). Ibn Faqīh (ed. de Goeje, p. 290) describes it as samakaẗ ʔaʕẓam min al-tinnīn [a fish bigger than a dragon]. 3. Ṭabarī, Annales, i, 1104; Damīrī, Ḥayawān, ii, 291 ff.; vide also Khizāna, i, 98. 4. Zoologie der Talmud, Frankfurt, 1858, p. 271. This is accepted by Levy, Wörterbuch, ii, 416, and Goldschmidt, Der Babylonische Talmud, vi, 1136; though Jastrow, Dict. Talmud, i, 667, gives it as meaning probably the shark. 5. Bartholomae, AIW, 1848; cf. Yasht, x, 118; v, 90. 6. Cf. also Hess in ZS, ii, 220. 7. In his Book on Dialects quoted by Athenaeus, vii, 76.

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deriv

► qurašī, adj., of, pertaining to, or belonging to the Koreish tribe; Koreishite: nsb-adj.

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