On the Etymological Awareness of the Traditional Arabic Lexicography: Aethiopica in Lisān al-ʿarab and Tāj al-ʿarūs
Arab lexicographers rarely attempted to search for a foreign origin of Arabic words, trying instead to derive them—not very persuasively—from autochthonous Arabic roots. Known exceptions mostly involve Persian, a foreign language par excellence for most Arab philologists. This article explores this...
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| Medienart: | Elektronisch Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Verfügbarkeit prüfen: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2025
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| In: |
JAOS
Jahr: 2025, Band: 145, Heft: 3, Seiten: 623-634 |
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Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Zusammenfassung: | Arab lexicographers rarely attempted to search for a foreign origin of Arabic words, trying instead to derive them—not very persuasively—from autochthonous Arabic roots. Known exceptions mostly involve Persian, a foreign language par excellence for most Arab philologists. This article explores this phenomenon in a different linguistic domain, viz., loanwords from Classical Ethiopic (Geʿez), the language of the ancient kingdom of Axum (the Horn of Africa). Our harvest, obtained from a systematic perusal of the lexica Lisān al-ʿarab and Tāj al-ʿarūs, is not very rich, but not totally insignificant either; a considerable number of conspicuous examples, often unrecognized in previous scholarship, have been detected, both within the quranic corpus and outside it. Taken together, this evidence provides a unique glimpse into language contacts between Arabia and Ethiopia. It also invites us to reconsider, in a more positive vein, the problem of the etymological awareness of traditional Arab philology. |
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| ISSN: | 2169-2289 |
| Enthält: | Enthalten in: American Oriental Society, JAOS
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.7817/jaos.145.3.2025.ar028 |
