> Ishinan: Dear John, you said: Historically in Arabic (Arabic /madīna) it
> doesn't really mean 'city'.
>
> I hope you are not insinuating that Arabic 'madiynah' is from the trilateral
> root dyn. Are you?
As it's an Aramaic loan-word, Ishinan, just as it is in Hebrew, the Arabs seem
to have been justifiably unsure whether the root is mdn or dyn, often a sign of
a loan-word even without other evidence.
In Aramaic, of course, mdīnā has the dual meaning of 'district' and 'city',
while Arabic seems to have initially borrowed it more narrowly to mean a
'citadel' or 'walled city district'; it alternatively means a miSr, or
'capital', at least in former Sasanian territory where it perhaps signifies the
shahrestān (provincial capital) of a district (shahr), what in New Persian
becomes itself a shahr. Or so I gather. Interestingly, shahrestān is itself
spelled מדינא in Middle Persian's Aramaizing orthography.
Hebrew, of course, took the other course and borrowed מדינא for its
administrative meaning of 'district'.
I was myself surprised to hear this distinction a few months ago on a
discussion on the learned Sogdian-L from scholars whose opinion I respect.
Still, treat it with a grain of caution.
> Actually, Arabic 'madiynah' is from a quite different trilateral root which
> is 'mdn' meaning to dwell/to settle (*see definition below). The cardinal
> mistake often made, is to confuse it with B. Hebrew 'mdiynah', root of dyn'
> (as in Ezr 2:1) which is a cognate with Arabic 'dyn'.
>
Sorry, Ishinan, I don't buy that. The root mdn is a denominal root from madīna,
not the other way round. In Aramaic, of course, the root is dwn.
John Leake
Open University
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