Barzakh, a term used three times in the Qurʾān (23:100, 25:53, 55:20). In Islamic terminology it is taken to refer to the period of existence of the soul after physical death and before the advent of the Resurrection (al-qiyāma). Regarding the etymology of this term, most philologists remain silent as to the possibility of its being a loan-word in Arabic. Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, on rather flimsy grounds, proposes a tentative origin from the Persian word barzah, meaning ‘agriculture’ or ‘the branch of a tr…