Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ There are only few direct borrowings in Ar from Grk in early times (e.g., ↗ʔiblīs, ↗burǧ, ↗sīmāʔ, ↗fulk, ↗qalam, ↗qamīṣ). Most other loanwords of ultimately Grk origin entered the language via Syr (e.g., ↗ʔusquf, ↗ʔazmīl, ↗barqūq, ↗EgAr buqsumāt, ↗¹siqālaẗ, ↗²siqālaẗ ~ saqqālaẗ, EgAr ↗ṭarabēẓaẗ, ↗mangalaẗ) or, later, via Mediterranean trade. Qīṯār(aẗ) goes back, via Syr qîṯāra, qîṯār ‘stringed instrument, harp, cithern, lyre’ (PayneSmith2003) (and/or a Romance form, in Andalusia?) to Grk κιθάρα kitʰára ‘cithara, lyre’. The Grk word may in its turn be related to (or borrowed from?) Pers setār (*seh tār) (or čahār tār?) ‘(instrument with) three (resp. four) strings’, and perh. even the Indian sitar. While Grk kitʰára passed into Syr and from there into Ar, it also gave rise to Lat cithara and, ultimately, Engl cither, Ge Zither, etc. The Ar word is either the origin of Span guitarra or, as others think, borrowed from there. In any case, Spain is the ‘home country’ of all Eur words for ‘guitar’.
▪ The differing opinions just mentioned can perh. be synthecized into one two-stringed history. In this, the Grk > Syr > Ar chain constitutes an early development in which Syr-Aramaic (and then Ar) borrowed the term for the original Grk lyre-like instrument (the word was used, e.g., to render Biblical terms for ‘lyre/harp’). Independently from this tradition, the Grk term also went into Lat and from there into the Romance languages. Thus, when the Arabs arrived in Southern Spain in mC8, their term met the Romance term, and the two melted again into one.
▪ It seems that the Andalusian qitāraẗ~qīṯāraẗ / guitarra then had to compete with the ↗ʕūd ‘lute’ that the Arab invaders brought with them. We may assume that the ʕūd was considered an instrument of the ruling elite and the palaces while the qiṯāraẗ/guitarra became associated with more popular culture. Some medieval paintings show a »guitarra morisca« (ʕūd-like, with rounded body and no bonds) competing with a »guitarra latina« (with a guitar-like “waist”, a flatter body, and bonds).
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▪ In ClassAr dictionaries, the main form is given as qītār.
▪ Freytag1835: qītār ‘Hbr kinnôr¹ organum (Genes. IV, 21)’; BK1860: qītār ‘cithare, guitare’; Lane: – ; Bustānī1869: main entry (s.r. √QYTR) qītār ‘stringed instrument for ṭarab’, var. qīṯār, qīṯāraẗ.
▪ Grk kitʰára appears in the Bible (NT) four times (1 Cor. 14:7, Rev. 5:8, 14:2 and 15:2), and is usually translated into English as ‘harp’.
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1. Freytag gives ʕûgab, but this is ‘flute’ while the word rendered as ‘harp’, ‘lyre’ or ‘musical instrument’ in translations of Genes. IV, 21, is kinnor. Corrected by myself – SG.

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▪ PayneSmith2003: Syr qîṯāra, qîṯār ‘stringed instrument, harp, cithern, lyre’.
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▪ Shiloah2012: »a musical instrument of the lyre family. It first appears in Arabic literature on music in the 3^rd/9^th c. to denote a Byzantine or Grk instrument of this type. It was made up of a richly-decorated rectangular sound box, two vertical struts fastened together by a yoke and strings which were left free at their greatest width«« (art. »Ḳit̲h̲āra, Ḳitarā [sic!]« in EI²). – Ibn Ḫurradāḏbih in K. al-Lahw and in his account appearing in Murūǧ al-ḏahab of al-Masʕūdī: »They (sc. the Byzantines) […] also have the qiṯāraẗ with twelve strings«; al-Ḫʷārazmī in Mafātīḥ al-ʕulūm: »the qitāraẗ is one of their instruments, and resembles the ṭunbūr (lute with a long neck)«. – The qiṯāraẗ was similar to the lūrā: two variations of the same instrument type en vogue since classical times and up to the first centuries of Islam. »The lūrā was a smaller instrument played by beginners and by amateurs, whereas the qiṯāraẗ was the instrument for professionals who towards the Islamic period used it to show off a virtuosity frequently displayed freely. […] It seems that, at a later period, the term is used to denote a different instrument, the guitar […]« (ibid.).
▪ Chantraine1968-80: the Grk kitʰára was a stringed instrument – « qui ne se distingue pas nettement de la λύρα, perfectionné par Terpandre qui aurait portée; le nombre des cordes à 7 […] ; la forme la plus anciennement attesté […], dont l’accentuation a été considérée comme eolienne […]«
▪ Accord. to Freytag1835, Ar qītār seems to have rendered the Hbr word for ‘harp, lyre’ in Ar translations of Gen. IV, 21.
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▪ Opinions differ as to the involvement of Ar as a mediator betw Grk kitʰára and Western words for ‘guitar’. While Littmann and others hold that the Eur words go back to Andalusian Ar, others (e.g., EtymOnline) would not exclude the reverse, i.e., a dependence of the Ar word on the Span one (< Lat < Grk). Details:
▪ Littmann1924, 90-91: Ge Gitarre, ultimately from Ar qīṯāra, qittāra (< Aram < Grk kitʰára). The Grk word, which prob. is related to an old Oriental Wanderwort, not only gave the Ar term, but also Ge Zither etc.
▪ DWDS (< W. Pfeifer1989–): Ge Gitarre (eC17) < Span guitarra < SpanAr qītāraẗ < Grk kitʰára ‘Zupfinstrument, eine Art Lyra’ (cf. Zither¹ ). Early attestations such as Kitarre (1615), Chitarron (1619) and prob. also Chitarre (1824) are likely to go back to the Grk word, either directly or via It chitarra. In C18 and C19, the form Guitarre supersedes. From C18 until eC19, Gitarre is soften used in the sense of Zither.
▪ In contrast, EtymOnline reports that »[t]he Ar word is perh. from Span […], though often the relationship is said to be the reverse«. Accordingly, no Ar form is mentioned in the etymology of Engl guitar (1620s): from Fr guitare, which was altered by Span and Prov forms from oFr guiterre, earlier guiterne < Lat cithara < Greek kitʰára ‘cithara’, a triangular seven-stringed musical instrument related to the lyre, perh. from Pers sihtār ‘three-stringed’, from si ‘three’ (oPers tʰri‑, cf. Engl three) + tār ’string’, from protIndEur root *ten- ‘to stretch’ (cf. Engl tension). »In post-classical times, the ancient instrument developed in many varieties in different places, keeping a local variant of the old name or a diminutive of it. Some of these local instruments subsequently became widely known, and many descendants of kitʰára reached Engl in reference to various stringed, guitar-like instruments.«
▪ The two theories may be harmonized by assuming a development of two chains of borrowing that met again when the Arabs arrived in Spain – see above, section conc.
▪ Accord. to Kasha1968, the Grk kitʰára had only four strings when it was imported into Greece. In the author’s view, the etymon is not seh-tār (‘three strings’) but Pers čahār tār ‘four strings’.²
▪ The name of the North-African kwitra (kouitra, quitra), a 4-stringed plucked instrument in the lute family which »[t]oday […] is associated almost exclusively with the Arabo-Andalusī musical traditions […], particularly in schools in the border region between Algeria and Morocco«, originally means a ‘small qītāraẗ‘, from the dimin. quwaytiraẗ, »a Mozabarabic term for plucked, stringed instruments, which came to North Africa with Andalusian migrants«.³
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1. Engl zither (1850) < Ge Zither < eNHGe Cither, Zitter, Citter (lC16) < lmHGe zitterlein (dimin., 1430) < OHGe zithara (C9) < Lat cithara, Grk kitʰára. In older times, the word meant the ‘lyre’ or a ‘harp’ or some other stringed instrument, similar to a lute, used to accompany singing – DWDS (< W. Pfeifer1989–), EtymOnline. 2. Michael Kasha, “A New Look at the History of the Classic Guitar,” Guitar Review, 30 (Aug. 1968): 3-12. 3. Tony Langlois, “Kwitra”, in EI³, online 2020.

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