D. D. Y.

Shapira 153

Middle Persian zrēh2], along with the existing Arabic dir [Old Persian drāda
> Middle Persian dirih], and Arabic sard, later zard, which is from Syriac
zardā’3. The “Avestan”, or rather Avestan-like zrādha is the ultimate source
of Old Aramaic zəraz4.
On the other hand, the receiving language was far from being a monolithic
entity — it is well known that the Arabic lexicon represents rather an amalgam
of different Arabian dialects, each with its own phonetic laws, and it might be
unwise to try to apply, mechanically, the theoretical rules of phonetic corre-
spondences of Classical Arabic, which is, a dominant dialect of Western Hijaz,
to apparently Iranian — or other — borrowed lexica channeled through other
Arabian dialects. Just consider, for example, Arabic fann, “art, kind”, and fand,
band, all of them from Iranian pand, “advice, cunning”.
Numerous Persian words are recognizable as such in the classical Arabic
dictionaries5 due to the intimate knowledge possessed by some of the important
Arabic lexicographers of their mother tongue, Persian. However, this knowledge
was mostly practical. Some Arabic lexicographers knew Aramaic dialects,
too, but other languages which supplied Arabic with loan words were beyond
their reach, such as Berber, Turkish, Coptic, Hebrew, Ethiopic, Greek, Indian,

2
Cf. Armenian zrah, close to Early New Persian zirih, cf. H. S. NYBERG, A Manual
of Pahlavi II, Glossary (Wiesbaden, 1974) 257; W. EILERS, Iranisches Lehngut im
Arabischen // Actas do IV Congresso de estudos árabes e islâmicos, Coimbra-Lisboa
1968 (Lisboa, 1971) 581–660, p. 598, W. EILERS, Iranisches Sprachgut im arabischen
Lexikon: über einige Berufsnamen und Titel // Indo-Iranian Journal V (1962) 203–232,
p. 205 & n. 7.
3
Cf. C. E. BOSWORTH, Iran and the Arabs Before Islam // The Cambridge History
of Iran 3(1), The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods / Ed. by E. YARSHATER
(Cambridge—London etc., 1983) 593–612, pp. 610–611.
4
Nuzi za-ri-(a)-am “coat of mail”, Amarna KUŠ sa-ri-am, Hittite šariyanni,
šaryani, Egypt trjn, Neo-Bab. šir’ānu, Hebrew širyōn, are all from Iranian zar-, see
H. W. BAILEY, Ariana // Orientalia Suecana 4 (1955) 3–18, p. 16.
5
Some of them entered European tongues, such as as alguazil, visir (cierto oficial);
the word was contaminated with alguncil, alvazil at an early date (cf. EILERS, Iranisches
Sprachgut im arabischen Lexikon... 207; for a bibliography of Arabic loanwords in
Iberian, cf. Américo CASTRO, España en su historia: Cristianos, moros y judíos (Buenos
Aires, 1948) 61ff.) On some European lemmata borrowed from Iranian via Arabic cf.
J. KURYŁOWICZ, Les éléments persans dans le fonds lexical européen // Acta Iranica 2
(1974), 391–397. On Iranian in Iraqi Arabic, cf. EILERS, Iranisches Lehngut im Ara-
bischen… 593; W. EILERS, Iran and Mesopotamia // The Cambridge History of Iran
3(1), The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods / Ed. by E. YARSHATER (Cambridge
UP—Cambridge—London etc., 1983) 502, and n. 5; 503.