Literary and Linguistic Notes (4)
Document Type : pajoohesh
Author
10.22081/jap.2025.77773
Abstract
This paper provides a very brief discussion on the etymology of the word musalmān ‘Muslim, Musulman’ in Persian (for a more detailed discussion see Arya Tabibzadeh forthcoming). It is argued that mosalmān < musalmān in Persian, is a rendering of the Syriac mšalmānā ‘complete, adult’, and -despite the traditional and conventional views- it has neither derived from the name of the companion Salmān al-Fārisī nor has anything to do with the Arabic word Muslim ‘Muslim’. While the common term referring to an adherent of Islam in Syriac medieval texts is mašlmānā ‘traitor’, which is a C-stem nomen agentis, there are rare cases where Muslims have been called mšalmānā ‘complete, adult’ which is a D-stem/intensive-stem nomen agentis. I argue that the strange form muslamān in Persian has been calqued from the latter Syriac word. The use of this Syriac loanword to refer to the adherents of Islam instead of its cognate Arabic term Muslim is not something strange, as there are similar cases where the Persians did not use the original Arabic terms to refer the Islamic concepts, but instead, used Syriac terms cognate with the Arabic terms, e.g. mazgit ‘mosque’, gazīt ‘tax’ (instead of masğid and ğizya). I suggest that the both Syriac words mašlmānā ‘traitor’ and mšalmānā ‘complete, adult’ were used in the early Islamic period as equivalents for the Arabic muslim by the Syriac speakers, but the former was used by Christians as a pejorative term to refer the former-Christians converted to Islam, and the latter was used by the proselytes converted to Islam to self-identify themselves. This process is comparable to the linguistic process of reappropriation / reclamation. Finally, it is suggested that the name of the companion Salmān may be a rendering of the Syriac/Aramaic šalmānā ‘compelete’ that is a defective form of the above-mentioned mšalmānā, with the common process of omission of the prefix m- (c.f. mtargmānā vs. targmānā).
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