Bibliotheca Polyglotta

▪ eC7 Occurs frequently in the Q, cf. ii, 102 ‘way, road’, then metaphorically, a ‘cause’, or ‘reason’.
▪ eC7 1 (highway, road) Q 15:76 wa‑ʔinnahā la‑bi‑sabīlin muqīmin ‘indeed they [the towns of the people of Lot and Midian] are on a highway remaining [till now]’; *Q 2:177 wa‑’bna ’l‑sabīli ‘and the wayfarer’; *Q 9:5 fa‑ḫallū sabīlahum ‘set them free [lit., release their way]’; *Q 4:34 fa‑lā tabġū ʕalayhinna sabīlan ‘then do not act against them in any way’; *Q 4:88 fa‑lan taǧida la‑hū sabīlan ‘you will never find for him a way out’; *Q 29:29 taqṭaʕūna ’l‑sabīla ‘you waylay travellers [lit., you cut off the highway]’; *Q 40:11 yaǧʕala ’llāhu lahunna sabīlan ‘God gives them another way out’; 2 (cause) Q 61:11 wa‑tuǧāhidūna fī sabīli ’llāhi bi‑ʔamwālikum wa‑ʔanfusikum ‘and you struggle for His cause with your possessions and your persons’; 3 (with def.art.: the right path, the power of reasoning, the ability to discriminate between good and evil, the way of God) Q 76:3 ʔinnā hadaynāhu ’l‑sabīla ʔimmā šākiran wa‑ʔimmā kafūran ‘We guided him to the [right] way; then he is either thankful or ungrateful’; 4 (way of this life) Q 80:20 ṯumma ’l‑sabīla yassarahū ‘the He enabled him to find a way’.

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▪ Jeffery1938, 162: »In the Qurʔān it is used both of a road, and in the technical religious sense of ‘The Way’ (cf. Acts ix, 2), i.e. sabīl Allāh. The Muslim authorities take it as genuine Arabic, and Sprenger, Leben, ii, 66, agrees with them. It is somewhat difficult, however, to derive it from √SBL as even Rāġib, Mufradāt, 221, seems to feel, and the word is clearly a borrowing from the Syr šᵊḇīlā.¹ As a matter of fact Hbr שׁביל and Aram שׁבילא mean both ‘road’ or ‘way of life’, precisely as the Syr šəḇīlā, but it is the Syr word which had the widest use and was borrowed into Arm as šawił,² and so is the more likely origin. It occurs in the old poetry, e.g. in Nābigha v, 18 (Ahlwardt, Divans, p. 6), and thus must have been an early borrowing.«
▪ EALL (Retsö, »Aramaic/Syriac Loanwords«³ ): loaned from Syr šḇīl.ā ‘way, path’.
▪ How are the meanings ‘way, path’ and ‘public fountain’ related? Are they? Are there connections to other items of the root √SBL?
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1. Schwally in ZDMG, liii, 197, says: »Bei der Annahme, dass sabīl ‘Weg’ echt arabisch ist, scheint es mir auffallend zu sein, dass unter den verschiedenen Synonymen gerade dieses dem Aramaischen und Hebraischen gleiche Wort für den religiösen Sprachgebrauch ausgesucht ist. Ich kann mir diese Erscheinung nur aus Entlehnung erklären." 2. Hübschmann, Arm. Gramm, i, 313; ZDMG, xlvi, 246. 3. following Jeffrey 1938.

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deriv

► ĭbn al-sabīl, n., 1a vagabond, tramp; 1b wayfarer, traveler
► fī sabīl…, prep., for the sake of, for, in behalf of, in the interest of
► bi‑ \ʕan sabīl…, prep., by means of, through, by
► fī sabīl allāh, expr., for the cause of God, in behalf of God and his religion
► ʕalà sabīl…, prep., by way of, for: e.g., ʕalà sabīl al‑taǧribaẗ, for a try, tentatively, ʕalà sabīl al‑fukāhaẗ, for fun, ʕalà sabīl al‑miṯāl, to quote s.th. as an example
► ḍāqat bihī ’l‑subul, expr., he was at his wit’s end
► laysa ʕalayya fī ḏālika sabīl, expr., there is nothing to keep me from doing that, I am free to do that, it is no sin if I do that

► sābil: ṭarīq sābilaẗ, n.f., a public, much‑frequented road
► al-sābilaẗ, n.f., the passers-by: PA I, f.

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