Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ eC7 (‘table spread with food’) Q 5:114 qāla ʕīsā bnu maryama ’llāhumma rabba-nā ʔanzil ʕalay-nā māʔidatan min-a l-samāʔi takūnu la-nā ʕīdan li-ʔawwali-nā wa-ʔāḫiri-nā wa-ʔāyatan min-ka ‘Jesus, son of Mary, said: O God, our Lord, send down to us a table [spread with food] from heaven, that it may be a feast for us, for the first of us and for the last of us, and a sign from Thee’
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▪ Jeffery1938: »A late word found only in a late Madinan verse, where the reference is to a table which Jesus brought down for His disciples. – The Muslim authorities take it to be a form FāʕiLaẗ from ↗māda (cf. LA, iv, 420), though the improbability of their explanations is obvious. It has been demonstrated several times that the passage Q 5:112-15 is a confusion of the Gospel story of the feeding of the multitude with that of the Lord’s Supper.¹ Fraenkel, Vocab, 24,² pointed out that in all probability the word is the Eth [Gz] māʔədd, which among the Abyssinian Christians is used almost technically for the Lord’s Table, e.g. māʔədd ʔəgzīʔabḥēr, while Nöldeke’s examination of the word in Neue Beiträge, 54, has practically put the matter beyond doubt.³ – Addai Sher, 148, however, has argued in favour of its being taken as a Pers word. Relying on the fact that māʔidaẗ is said by the Lexicons to mean ‘food’ as well as ‘table’, he wishes to derive it from Pers mīdeh, meaning ‘farina triticea’.⁴ Praetorius also, who in ZDMG, lxi, 622 ff., endeavours to prove that Eth [Gz] māʔədd and the Amh mād are taken from Ar, takes māʔidaẗ back to Pers mez, mīz ⁵ (earlier pronounced māz), through forms MYḎ, MYD, and maydah. Now there is a Phlv word myazd,⁶ meaning a sacred repast of the Parsis, of which the people partake at certain festivals after the recitation of prayers and benedictions for the consecration of the bread, fruit, and wine used therein. It seems, however, very difficult to derive māʔidaẗ from this, and still more difficult from the forms proposed by Praetorius. Nöldeke rightly objects that the forms mīz and māz which Praetorius quotes from the Mehrī and ʕUmānī dialects in favour of his theory, are hardly to the point, for these dialects are full of Pers elements of late importation. Praetorius has given no real explanation of the change of z to d, whereas on the other side may be quoted the Bilin mīd and the Beja mēs which are correct formations from a stem giving māʔədd in Eth [Gz], and thus argue for its originality in that stock.«
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1. Nöldeke, ZDMG, xii, 700; Bell, Origin, 136. 2. Vide also his Fremdw, 83, and Jacob, Beduinenleben, 235. 3. Vide also Wellhausen, Reste, 232, n.; Pautz, Offenbarung, 255, n.; Vollers, ZDMG, li, 294; Cheikho, Naṣrāniyya, 210. 4. Vullers, Lex, ii, 1252. 5. Vullers, Lex, ii, 1254. 6. West, Glossary, 222.

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deriv

►māʔidaẗ al-tašrīḥ, operating table
►māʔidaẗ al-zīnaẗ, dressing table
►māʔidaẗ al-sufraẗ, dining table

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