Words Arabic Took In
pairidaēza
الفِرْدَوْس
firdaws
Classical scholars disagreed over firdaws: al-Farra' called it Arabic, Ibn Durayd derived it from fardasa, 'spaciousness', al-Zajjaj called it Greek, Ka'b Syriac. Modern scholars trace it to Old Iranian pairidaēza, 'a wall around a garden', then 'a walled garden'. Greek paradeisos and English paradise come from the same source.
- Came
- From Persian
- Original meaning
- a wall around a garden
- Meaning in Arabic
- a garden; a garden of Paradise
«قال الزجّاج: «الفردوس» أصله روميٌّ أُعرب، وهو البستان.»
A Qur'anic word. Scholars differed over Qur'anic words said to be of foreign origin: some denied any non-Arabic word in the Qur'an, others accepted them. Abu 'Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam reconciled the two: the words were foreign in origin, the Arabs made them their own, so they are 'Arabic now, foreign in origin, and both parties are right' (al-Mu'arrab, ed. Shakir, p. 5).
Ahmad Shakir, in his notes to al-Mu'arrab, holds firdaws to be genuinely Arabic.
English paradise did not pass through Arabic: it came from Greek paradeisos through Latin (American Heritage Dictionary; Encyclopaedia Iranica).
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