Risala fi tahqiq tarib al-kalima al-agamiyya.

• Author: Ermers, Robert
• Position: Treatise on the Verification of the Arabicization of Foreign Words

By Ibn Kahmal Pasha. Edited by Mohammad Sawie Damascus: Insititut Francais d'Etudes Arabes de Damas, 1991. Pp. 172 (Arabic) + 13 (English).

There has always been discussion among Arabic scholars with regard to foreign words in the Arabic language. Some of them accepted the idea of the existence of foreign elements in the Quran, whereas others rejected it, claiming that the Arabic language does not need loan-words (see Sawaie, p. 12). Whatever the opinions of the respective authors, the origin and etymology of foreign words in Arabic are explained from within the scope of the Arabic grammatical tradition. In this context, many scholars, either inspired by religious conviction or hampered by a lack of knowledge of foreign languages, set up new etymologies in order to explain the peculiar form of certain words.

The book under review here is an edition of an Arabic treatise that is devoted to the discussion of foreign loan-words in Arabic, compiled by the Ottoman scholar Ibn Kamal Pasa (873/1468-69-940/1533). Ibn Kamal PM, born in Anatolia and fluent in Turkish, Persian and Arabic, discusses a large number of Persian words used in Arabic. He does not confine himself to a mere explanation of the Arabic words and their Persian etymology but he takes the old dictionaries, commentaries to the Quran and critical editions of poems as a basis to amend some false etymologies.

An interesting illustration of his method is the long discussion of the Arabic word satrang "chess" (pp. 55-66). In the first place, Ibn Kamal Pasa quotes Hariri, who agrees with Gawhari (p. 55), that satrang must rather be pronounced sitrang, since the pattern fallal--i.e., the pattern of satrang--does not exist in Arabic. Therefore, Hariri prefers the pattern filall, analogous to girdahl and qirtab. With regard to the radicals, in Hariri's view, satrang may be a derivation from the Arabic s-t-r "partition" and, when pronounced satrang it is possible to derive it from s-tt-r "to draw lines".

On p. 58, Ibn Kamal Pasa continues with the discussion of Hariri's statements. He first quotes from remarks made by some unknown readers in the margin of Hariri's work, Maqamat al-Variri, who do not agree with some other examples given by Hariri. After this, Ibn Kamal Pasa partially agrees with al-Imam al-Wahidi (p. 61), who accepts sitrang as a Persian loan-word but, according to Ibn Kamal Pasa, derives it from the wrong word. Al-Wahidi's statement (p. 63),... muarrab wa-l-ahsan kasru s-sini...