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From: goer@midway.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Re: A look into Islamic banking
Message-ID: <1990Nov15.085941.24105@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Date: 15 Nov 90 08:59:41 GMT
Sender: bes@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Behnam Sadeghi)
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
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Paul@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>In article <1990Nov13.162007.20281@wpi.WPI.EDU> mughal@iago.caltech.edu writes:
>>
>>>From Quran:
>>
>>If ye did well, ye did well for yourselves;
>>if ye did evil, (ye did it) against yourselves;
>>so when the second of the warnings came to pass, (We
>>permitted your enemis) to disfigure your face, and
>>to enter your Temple, as they had entered before,
>>and to visit with destruction all that fell into
>>their power. (7)
>
>The original text in Arabic (English transleteration) says :
>
>  "Wa liadkhulu al-masjida cama dakhaluhu aoula mara."
>  "and to enter THE MOUSQUE like they entered it the first time."
>
>where did "your" come from? And how did he translate masjid to "Temple"??

Okay, my Arabic isn't perfect, but can't the word _masjid_ be used of
synagogues, and even Christian churches as well?  Someone please refresh
my memory on this.

Those of you with a knowledge of other Semitic languages will at once
recognize that the word _msjd_ is not a novel Arabism.  It is from the
root _sjd_, which means to bow down or pray.  It occurs in Syriac, where
a bet segdtha is a 'place of worship.'  It also occurs in Hebrew.  Be-
cause the word is simply a common ma- prefixed formation, one suspects
that it is pre-Islamic, and that its use to denote exclusively *Muslim*
places of worship came about only in more recent times.

I would like it if someone could confirm/deny these observations, as
I'm surely not an Arabist!

-Richard