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THE DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAMIC VOCABULARY
by David Ross
15 Feb - 12 Oct 2003
Introduction.
Alphonse Mingana wrote an essay in 1927 detailing Syriacisms in
the Qur'an. He arranged them into five categories, of which the
first three were proper names, religious terms, and common
words.
More recently Yehuda Nevo surveyed the Arabic rock inscriptions
from the first Muslim centuries (A.H.). He arranged them into a
common class of indeterminate monotheism; a "basic class" found
only at Sde Boqer south of Be'er Sheva and a "second class"
immediately following it; a "Mohammedan class" that follows the
creed of the Dome of the Rock; and a "Muslim class" in accord
with the Qur'an.
My copy of his inscriptions are in Ibn Warraq's What the Koran
Really Says pp. 153-164: 153-157 have the proposed Arabic
transliterations, 158-160 have translations of some of these,
and 161-164 have transcriptions as they actually appear. For the
remainder of this article, I refer to them in the format "1.x".
If the Qur'an contains Syriacisms, it ought to be possible to
chart the Arabic borrowing from Syriac in the popular
inscriptions. Then we can decide if these borrowings are from
the Qur'an, were adopted independently of the Qur'an, or if they
are the result of state credal formulae that ended up in the
Qur'an at a later date.
The "Basic Class" Period.
Nevo noted that this class "are recognisable by ... a certain
set of phrases and allusions in the text".
Of the ones Nevo translated into English, many bear "a heavy
atmosphere of dread". I notice this formula in what he
translated:
forgive (ighfir; c.f. Qur'an sura 44:14, 'llaha ghafarun) name
of person as he lives [and as he dies] transgressions (dh-n-b):
his transgressions, the first ones and those that followed (c.f.
79:25, "first and last"), or any transgression he transgressed
The above may be in nearly any order. Many also include a list
of honorifics for Allah.
I will assign the pre-Marwanid Syriacisms into three classes.
Class A will be Syriacisms actually employed in the text. Class
B will be Syriacisms about which the text's author had no
interest, at least not while he was working here. And Class C
will be Syriacisms about which the author would have been
interested, but did not use.
In Class A belong certain Qur'anic personal names, prior
variants of al-janna, and Allah al-rahman.
Class A's personal names include Allah Himself and "'Isa/Ghisa"
with either 'ayn or ghayn (1.11, 1.13, 1.15, 1.23, 1.24). 'Isa
will be the "Masih" of the Qur'an. Abraham is not yet present,
despite his importance for the Damascene emir and for Sebeos.
al-janna is also Syriac, from gnt and made its first appearance
in the "second class", that succeeded the basic class, but
neither the word nor its class yet followed the Mohammedan
template. When Qur'ans started appearing, not even all of them
understood this term: a rejected excerpt, preserved in Syriac
translation, had read: "No one understands the meaning of
al-janna except Allah". This word thus joins the twelve other
words in the Qur'an which its editors knew required an
explanation, for example 32:25, 74:27-28, 83:7-9 (sijjin),
83:18-20, 101, 101:9-11 (hawiya). In those cases, though, the
editors provided the explanation (however unsatisfactory it
might be).
al-janna's basic class predecessors were jannat al-na'im and al-
majanna. Suras 5 and 26 use jannat al-na'im (1.19) as a term for
Paradise, made very explicit in sura 47. majanna (1.9) seems to
mean "sanctuary" but may be an Arabic cognate rather than a
borrowing. The inscriptions do not provide enough text for us to
determine what they meant by those terms.
The jannat al-na'im was a place to be entered in text 1.19 and,
later, in 123 AH (Ory, 'Ayn al-Garr). One place where believers
hoped to enter as of "year 31" (AH?), according to this
inscription, was called al-rahmat, "the Mercy".
The Qur'an uses rahman as an honorific, a Syriac cognate of
Arabic r- h-m. The basic class uses the Arabic form exclusively
(1.3, 1.9) but al-rahman does appear in Hajri's inscription, and
in the Arabic part of papyrus PERF 558.
Among Class B are qurban and dhabaha, qiyama, and malakut. The
basic class authors did not care about sacrifice, resurrection,
nor the visionary Kingdom - respectively - in the context of
writing those inscriptions.
Of Class C, Nevo primarily took notice of tz-l-y - "be inclined
toward", derived from Syriac tz lwto' - against Arabic ighfar
(p.140; also c.f. the inscription above, the Iraq inscription,
and the Mu'awiya dam inscription). The author of these texts
understood one of Allah's activities to be forgiveness, as did
suras 3 and 47 of the Qur'an. Nevo noted later (Muslim) texts
would request of Allah for tz- l-y (Third International
Colloquium on "From Jahiliyya to Islam", 1985; quoted in Warraq
pp. 140-1). The author of the early texts did not however beg
for tz-l-y as would the Muslims, but for gh-f-r exclusively.
For gh-f-r's antithesis, a sin, the basic class used dh-n-b
consistently, which Nevo translated "transgression". The Qur'an
used this, but also three Syriac words: khatia, taghut, and hub.
None of these may be discerned in the basic class.
Also missing here are two other relevant words, furqan
(redemption) and hanan (grace), both Syriac loans available to
the Qur'an. Richard Bell would add further qayyûm from 2:255
(and 3:2): "qayyûm is by Muslim interpreters derived from Arabic
qaya bi, and taken in the sense of "all-sustaining", but it is
probably the Aramaic qayyâm, "eternal"" (from Commentary on the
Qur'an, Warraq p. 608). b. Mas'ud had qayyâm as a textual
variant in both verses (Jeffrey p. 32); secondarily or not, b.
Mas'ud in using that variant most likely at least interpreted
the slogan according to its Aramaic transliteration.
The Surat al-Imran.
A copy of verses 45-55 of Surat al-Imran - the third sura in our
Qur'an - has been uncovered in the San'a Mosque. This portion of
that sura served as scripture for the Dome of the Rock. All that
can be said of its time and place is that it predates 71 AH -
and introduces many Syriacisms.
The disciples have an apparently Ethiopic name, al-Hawâriyyûna.
And when they speak they recite a confession of faith, "nahnu
ansâru Allâhi âmannâ bi-Allâhi wa-ishhad bi-annâ muslimûn", "we
are helpers of Allah, we believe in Allah, and we bear witness
that we are submissors", giving the first attestation of both
the shahadah and Muslims.
This scrap of paper was also first to call Jesus the masih,
Syriac for Messiah, and used the Targumic (Syriac) pronunciation
of his mother Maryam<-Miryam to boot. This is also the first
record of "Abraham" in Arabic: also of Syriac origin, "Ibrahim"
(3:84). It also used an Arabic term for Jesus: the rasul,
"messenger" of God. Mingana notes this word is a translation
from a Syriac concept (Warraq p. 180).
Lastly, it includes Syriac malak, attested in Arabic elsewhere.
Angels are first mentioned outside the Negev, printed here and
cited p.148; but that text does not classify them in any
language. An undated, but early, inscription from Ta'if cites:
"Allah and His angels shower blessings on the Prophet", and so
does Qur'an sura 33:56. In 71 AH / 691 CE is the first dateable
mention: the Dome of the Rock.
33:56 is sufficiently un-Islamic as to be independent of Abd al-
Malik, and since it had become popular enough for Abd al-Malik
(and Abd Allah ibn Ta'min) to use it, it must have had a running
start in the Mohammedan community. 33:56 also bears the first
Arabic statement that Muhammad is a nabi, the famous Hebrew term
for Prophet (c.f. the Neviyyim books in the Bible, referred to
in sura 3:84), which may go some way to explaining 33:56's
popularity.
The Innovations of Abd al-Malik.
In this period, the inscriptions continued to use "ighfar"
sentences, appealing for the forgiveness of a Merciful Allah.
They did not yet presume upon Allah to incline (tz-l-y) toward
them.
The table in p. 148 noted a 6% inclusion of a "tzalli" sentence.
But this is misleading; it is only used for Jesus (Dome of the
Rock: Warraq p. 146), presumably because the dominant culture
insisted he had no need of ghufr (or rahmat). As for Muhammad,
the Dome repeated "and peace be on him, and may God have mercy"
twice, which the Qur'an did not. To the Dome, Muhammad was in
more need of mercy than was Jesus.
The Dome of the Rock canonised masih for Jesus, Maryam for Mary,
and rasul. An Arab-Sassanid coin from the 690's CE applied it to
Muhammad as well. Both rasul-statements issued from Abd
al-Malik's Damascus (Warraq p. 133), and a third issued from
Yahya b. al-Hakam, a subject of same. (That it was already
"Yahya" and not "Yuhanna" shows that sura 3:39 had been read
"Yahya", and that sura 3 was canonical, already by the pre-Dome
date of b. al-Hakam's birth.)
Outside Damascus is the another Muslim text, which also
reiterates the Dome's concepts of rasul and nabi, its assumption
that Allah is alone and without partner, and its formula "may
Allah grant him peace". A decade later, Muhammad was rasul in
Egyptian papyri.
The Dome of the Rock also canonised the Syriac malak (and Hebrew
nabi) when it incorporated what would become Qur'an sura 33:56.
In the Dome, too, is the first mention of Syriac qiyama, in the
form of the "Day of Resurrection". The yaum al-qiyama is in
al-Imran too but the surviving portion stops just short of 3:55.
Needless to say, the Dome does not handle it in nearly the
detail the Qur'an does.
Here we see the canonisation of the Syriacisms already in the
text. The Dome and coin inscriptions - i.e. the state creed of
Abd al- Malik - stated that Muhammad and Jesus were messengers in
the same mold. There was also a popular assumption of a sinless
Jesus.
But note that the process was still not complete. The rule of
God was the Arabic mulki, as elsewhere in 3:26; not the Syriac
malakut of 6:75, and the Dome and official contemporaries still
did not endorse or oppose any form of al-janna. And when a "sin"
was referred to, it was a dh-n-b as above.
After the Dome.
Following the Dome, from 691 to 724 CE, one finds more
"Qur'anic" quotes, of which some will survive in our Qur'an and
some will not. One of the former, from a certain 'Ali b.
Abdallah, preserves the ? Aramaic qayyum, dated 93 AH / 711 CE in
Jabal Usays in Syria; that quote would later introduce 2:255.
To this period also belongs the first official appearance of a
request for al-janna. Outside Sde Boqer but still in Negev, it
was something to be entered like the jannat al-na'im (d-kh-l,
Nevo in Warraq p.141, substantiated not there but in his earlier
work Negev, MA4265, 85 AH / 704 CE). A decade later in Mecca, it
was requested of Allah directly (yas'al Allah al-janna), in this
case by Umayya son of Abd al-Malik in 98 AH / 716-717 CE.
Hisham and the Fire.
For the most part, Caliph Hisham (724-743 CE) protected the
faith of his father 'Abd al-Malik: Allah was alone, Lord of all,
served by angels and prophets, with Muhammad and 'Isa among His
messengers and prophets. But he felt free to add his own stamp
on the evolving new religion.
Abraham in 117 AH now appears on popular inscriptions, spelled
according to sura 3's Syriac "Ibrahim".
as'al Allah al-janna appears again in an inscription (p. 167
n.26), this time in the first person. The same usage appears at
Sde Boqer in the latter part of 1.12. 1.12b and Hisham viewed
al-janna as the antithesis of al-nar, "the fire", as does the
Qur'an sura 2:81-2. 1.12b and Hisham also begged Allah to
protect them from al-nar, which is not Qur'anic (Warraq p. 145).
This is probably the "Mohammedan idiom" that helped lead Nevo to
treat 1.12b as Hishamite (Warraq pp. 139, 143). These
expressions parallel the Qur'an, but the parallel does not imply
quotation (in either direction). Rather, the terms represents an
expression of the religious language in which the Qur'an was in
the process of being composed.
6:75's Syriac malakut of heaven is still absent; but then, this
was a visionary term, more suitable for the prophets than for
the pious.
As Jesus did not require pardoning on the Dome, and as both he
and Muhammad were mursalun from Allah, having Muhammad not
require pardoning followed naturally. Hence, by 1.12b's time
"tzalli" for Muhammad as well as Jesus.
But even this late A.H., everyone else still required ghufr of
the All-Merciful. I conclude that for Hisham, what Nevo called
the "sinner's load" continued to bear down on the Mohammedan as
it had done for the Christian. al-nar was a place Mohammedans
feared that they deserved - as do Christians - and so they
prayed together for Allah's protection from it in the form of
forgiveness.
Conclusion.
Arabs and Aramaeans had been neighbours for millennia before
Muhammad. Muhammad's religion was primitive - deliberately so,
the better to attract allies to his cause. As time went on,
Arabic required a new religious vocabulary; such a vocabulary
already existed in Arabic's cousin-language, Aramaic.
The Damascus Caliphate involved itself more and more in the base
religion of its subjects. Words entered common usage, and thence
entered the prayers and creeds promulgated from Damascus. In
this way Syriac loans found a wide (not to say, captive)
audience.
Any thoughts? e-mail me :^)
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Other Links
Back to The House of David
The Proto-Qur'an. More on the Dome of the Rock.
The Arabic Islamic Inscriptions. Outside the Negev. This is the best
evidence that Islamic apologists can dig up in response. It turned
out to be quite useful... to me.
The Content and Context of Early Islamic Inscriptions by RG
Hoyland.
Presents the inscriptions with full references. However, he does not
present them by date; and he assumes the Qur'an existed already,
which is the very statement in question. For example: he says "The
first explicit statement [of the Qur'an] features on a tombstone from
Egypt dated 195 / 810". Then he says "An epitaph of 102 / 720
cites
67:1". But that "67:1" assumes not only a Qur'an, but an Uthmanic
text, with the sura 67 in the place of 67, over ninety years prior!
The most he can say is that the epitaph cites the logion that now
occupies 67:1 in the Uthmanic recension. The imprecision turns out
to
be essential to his conclusion - submission, if not to Islam then at
least to jahiliyya: "one cannot hope to isolate the different stages
of its growth from inscriptions". Well, no, but one has to start
somewhere.
Bibliography
What the Koran Really Says pp. 131-168, ed. Ibn Warraq. Prometheus
Books, Amherst, MA. 2002.
Mingana, Alphonse. Syriac Influence on the Style of the Koran.
Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 11 (1927). 77-98.
Nevo, Yehuda D. Towards a Prehistory of Islam. JSAI 17 (1994) 108-41.
Miscellany
12-15 Feb 2003: started. 16 Feb: janna. 17 Feb: Hisham section, and
ayat from modern Islamic apologists. 19 Feb: nabi and malak. 20 Feb:
reorg of janna / rahmat; malak now pre-Marwanid; new project for the
Dome to account for this. 2 March: malakut. 5 March: Umayya. 22-23
March: replaced "After the Dome" with a better Qur'anic quote and an
even earlier al-janna. 26-27 March: al-Imran put in its rightful
place. 8 June: fixes. 12 October: organising paradise and Abraham,
brought in PERF 558.
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