Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ Jeffery1938: »It occurs only in early Sūras in descriptions of the pleasures of Paradise, and was recognized by some of the early authorities as a Nabataean word (cf. al-Suyūṭī, Itq, 319; Mutaw, 60).¹ Some, of course, endeavoured to derive it from kāb, but this verb is obviously denominative (TA, i, 464; LA, ii, 225).
The word is commonly used in the early poetry, cf. ʕAdi b. Zaid, al-ʔAʕšà (Geyer, Zwei Gedichte, i, 56 = Dīwān, ii, 21), ʕAbda b. atl-Ṭabīb,² etc., and seems to have been an early loan-word from Aram, as Horovitz, Paradies, 11, has noted, though Aram kwbʔ, Syr kūbā both seem to be from the ByzGrk koûpa (Lat cupa, cf. Fraenkel, Vocab, 25), from the older Grk kúmbē.³ «

1. Vide also Sprenger, Leben, ii, 507, n. 2. In Mufaddaliyāt (ed. Lyall), xxvi, 76. 3. Levy, Fremdw, 151, points out a very probable Sem origin for kúmbē in the sense of ‘ship’, but in that under discussion the borrowing seems to be the other way, for as Boissacq, sub voc., points out, it is a true Indo-European word. Vollers, ZDMG, li, 316, would derive kūb from the Italian, but see Nallino therein, p. 534.

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