زربية

• William Hoyt Worrell considers it a genuine Arabic word. It is according to him from زِرْب (zirb, “canal”) and originally meant a “rug streaked with canals”, a “striped rug”, formed as فِسْقِيَّة (fisqiyya, “fountain”), شَمْسِيَّة (šamsiyya, “parasol”), حَنَفِيَّة (ḥanafiyya, “faucet, spigot”).
• It could be borrowed from Ge'ez ዘርቤት (zärbet) from ዘረበ (zäräbä, “to trample”), which Theodor Nöldeke and Arthur Jeffery find most appealing, but Wolf Leslau and Siegmund Fraenkel assume that the Ge'ez word is from the Arabic.
• It has been suggested to be from a Middle Persian *hcdl-pdy (/⁠azēr-pay⁠/, literally “under the foot”) by Georg Hoffmann, but this is doubtful for not being attested in any Persian.
• It would rather be a Middle Persian *DHBʾ-pay (/⁠zar-pay⁠/, literally “gold-foot”), as Jeffery corrects, but it is unsensible that this would come to mean a carpet.
• It could be a *DHBʾ-ʾby (/⁠zar-ābī⁠/, literally “goldeny”), a parallel to such a formation being found in Persian سیمابی (simâbi, “silvery”), to which Wilhelm Eilers and Johnny Cheung lean, and when borrowed been treated as a broken plural with the singular back-formed from the plural, but one has to assume for Persian آب (âb) an unusual meaning “splendour, lustre” from Sanskrit आभा (ābhā, “appearance, splendour, lustre”) and the frequency of such a term is doubtful.
• It could, as Nabīl al-Waġlīsiyy reconstructs, reflect the name of the land of Azerbaijan as it is renowned yore and today for opulent rug manufacturing, being a doublet of أَذَرِيّ (ʔaḏariyy, “Azeri”) of a different segmentation including /b/ and lacking the hamzated onset.

• IPA^(key): /zir.bij.ja/, /zur.bij.ja/, /zar.bij.ja/

زَرْبِيَّة or زُرْبِيَّة or زِرْبِيَّة • (zarbiyya or zurbiyya or zirbiyya) f (plural زَرَابِيّ (zarābiyy))

1. carpet, rug
   • 609–632 CE, Qur'an, 88:16:

     وَزَرَابِيُّ مَبْثُوثَةٌ

     wa-zarābiyyu mabṯūṯatun

     and carpets spread out

   • 2015 June 12, “"زرابي" أزلغ الأمازيغية..احتفالية قبائلية لغزل الصوف في المغرب”, in Anadolu Agency‎, archived from the original on 2020 November 26:

     أَجْمَلُ أَنْوَاعِ ٱلزَّرَابِيِّ ٱلَّتِي تَحْبِكُهَا نِسَاءُ "وَرْزَازَاتَ" فِي ٱلْأَمَاسِيِّ ٱلدَّافِئَةِ مَمْزُوجَةٌ بِأَهَازِيجِ ٱلْأَمَازِيغِ ٱلْقَدِيمَةِ، تِلْكَ ٱلْمُلَقَّبَةُ بِـ"ٱلزَّرْبِيَّةِ ٱلْوَاوْزَكِيتِيَّةِ" (نِسْبَةً لِقَبَائِلِ وَمِنْطَقَةِ زَكِيتْ قُرْبَ تَازْنَاخَتْ).

     ʔajmalu ʔanwāʕi z-zarābiyyi llatī taḥbikuhā nisāʔu "warzāzāta" fī l-ʔamāsiyyi d-dāfiʔati mamzūjatun biʔahāzīji l-ʔamāzīḡi l-qadīmati, tilka l-mulaqqabatu bi-"z-zarbiyyati l-wāwzakītiyyati" (nisbatan liqabāʔili waminṭaqati zakīt qurba tāznāḵat).

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• Moroccan Arabic: زربية (zarbiyya)

• Cheung, Johnny (2017) On the (Middle) Iranian borrowings in Qurʾānic (and pre-Islamic) Arabic‎, Leiden: Leiden University, pages 10–11
• Eilers, Wilhelm (1962) “Iranisches Lehngut im arabischen Lexikon”, in Indo-Iranian Journal (in German), volume 5, number 3, page 205
• Fraenkel, Siegmund (1886) Die aramäischen Fremdwörter im Arabischen (in German), Leiden: E. J. Brill, pages 92–93
• Freytag, Georg (1833) “زربية”, in Lexicon arabico-latinum praesertim ex Djeuharii Firuzabadiique et aliorum Arabum operibus adhibitis Golii quoque et aliorum libris confectum‎ (in Latin), volume 2, Halle: C. A. Schwetschke, page 232
• Jeffery, Arthur (1938) The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān (Gaekwad’s Oriental Series; 79), Baroda: Oriental Institute, pages 150–151
• Leslau, Wolf (1991) Comparative Dictionary of Geʿez (Classical Ethiopic), 2nd edition, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, →ISBN, page 643
• Nöldeke, Theodor (1910) Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft‎ (in German), Straßburg: Karl J. Trübner, page 53
• Al-Waġlīsiyy, Nabīl (2018 April 13) “أصل كلمة زربية وتسمية أذربيجان”, in على رصيف الكلمات‎
• Wehr, Hans with Kropfitsch, Lorenz (1985) “زربية”, in Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart‎ (in German), 5th edition, Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, published 2011, →ISBN, page 521
• Worrell, William Hoyt (1934) “On Certain Arabic Terms for “Rug””, in Ars Islamica, volume 1, number 2, →DOI, pages 220–221