Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition

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Sabīl
(3,095 words)

(a.), pi. subul , literally “way, road, path”, a word found frequently in the Ḳurʾān and in Islamic religious usage.

1. As a religious concept.

Associated forms of the Arabic word are found in such Western Semitic languages as Hebrew and Aramaic, and also in Epigraphic South Arabian as s 1 bl (see Joan C. Biella, Dictionary of Old South Arabic , Sabaean dialect, Cambridge, Mass. 1982, 326). A. Jeffery, following F. Schwally, in ZDMG, liii (1899), 197, surmised that sabīl was a loanword in Ḳurʾānic usage, most likely taken from Syriac, where s̲h̲ebīlā has both the literal sense of “road”…

Cite this page
Bosworth, C.E. and Behrens-Abouseif, Doris, “Sabīl”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Consulted online on 28 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0954>
First published online: 2012
First print edition: ISBN: 9789004161214, 1960-2007



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