J. Int. Qur’anic Stud. Assoc.

2023; 8(1): 157–171

Suleyman Dost*
The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān:
A Reassessment
https://doi.org/10.1515/jiqsa-2023-0008

Abstract: The word nabtahil, which appears only once in the Qur’an in Q 3:61, has
become the basis of a fairly well-known practice in pre-modern and modern Islam
called mubāhala, “mutual cursing” due to the verse’s alleged connection to a cursing
duel between Muhammad and Christians from Najran. Some exegetes, however,
took it to mean “to pray humbly/sincerely”. This article argues that among the two
explanations offered by Muslim scholars and exegetes for ibtahala, “to pray” and
“to curse”, the latter is quite probably incorrect and arose from a misinterpretation
of the word’s solitary usage in the qur’anic verse whereas the former explanation
fares better in view of the comparative Semitic evidence. Having evaluated the
attestations of the word in Muslim sources and in other languages, I offer a third
explanation, namely that the word ibtahala means “to debate”, based on a Classical
Ethiopic cognate.

Keywords: hapax legomenon, mubāhala, tafsīr, Ge'ez

This article aims to discuss and elucidate the meaning of a hapax legomenon in the
Qurʾān. The word in question is nabtahil, a first-person plural jussive form of the
verbal root ibtahala, which in turn is the eighth form verb of the trilateral root b-h-l.
It appears in Q 3:61, which later sources places in the context of a Christological dis-
agreement between Muḥammad and a group of Christian interlocutors identified
as delegates from the town of Najrān.1 After telling the narrative of Jesus’ mission
and explaining that his fatherless birth is not different from the parentless creation
of Adam (3:59–60), the Qurʾān addresses Muḥammad in 3:61 as follows:

And whoever disputes with you (ḥājjaka) concerning him [i.e., Jesus], after the knowledge
that has come to you, say: “Come now, let us call our sons and your sons, our wives and your

1 The locus classicus is Ibn Hishām, al-Sīrah al-nabawiyyah, 2:215–26 (tr. Guillaume, 270–77).

*Corresponding Author: Suleyman Dost, University of Toronto, Department for the Study of
­Religion, Jackman Humanities Building, 170 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5R 2M8, Canada,
E-Mail: suleyman.dost@utoronto.ca
158 Suleyman Dost

wives, ourselves (anfusanā) and yourselves (anfusakum), then let us perform the act of ibtihāl
(nabtahil) and so lay God’s curse upon the ones who lie (fa-najʿal laʿnata llāhi ʿalā l-kādhibīn).”2

The part I underlined and deliberately avoided fully translating is where the word
of our inquiry stands in the verse. As we shall see below, Muslim lexicographers
and commentators of the Qurʾān proposed two distinct, but potentially interrelated,
meanings for nabtahil: a) “let us curse/invoke God’s wrath on each other” (or a close
variant of it), or b) “let us pray earnestly/humbly” (or a close variant of it). In the
following pages I will argue that the first explanation is quite probably incorrect
and arose from a misinterpretation of the word’s solitary usage in the qurʾānic
verse. The second interpretation, I contend, is easier to defend based on compara-
tive Semitic evidence. After discussing the opinions of Muslim scholars on the two
possible meanings of the word, I will offer at the end of the paper a third, alternative
translation that has not yet been entertained.
Before navigating the opinions of early Muslim scholars on nabtahil, however, I
need to dwell briefly on why this word posed particular difficulties to lexicographers
and exegetes. Even a cursory look into classical and modern lexicons reveals that
the verbal root b-h-l was not merely rare in the Qurʾān, it was not a very common
or productive root in general. Lexicons offer two sets of glosses for different forms
of b-h-l: “to curse” and “to pray.” These two glosses, moreover, ultimately depend
on how one interprets the single testimony of ibtahala in Q 3:61. Like many Arabic
words there is a cameline sense of the verb bahala, “he left the she-camel without
a ṣirār (i.e., he left her to herself),”3 but this can hardly be helpful to explain the
usage in the qurʾānic passage. Other attestations of words from the same root in
pre-Islamic poetry and the ḥadīth similarly resist easy explanations, as we shall see
below. The fact that nabtahil and a few other b-h-l words ended up in gharīb works
that are devoted to explicate rare terms in the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth shows that
there was indeed some confusion about their meanings.
Looking at the context of the word nabtahil in Q 3:61, it is not hard to see why
some commentators thought that it must have something to do with cursing. They
simply associated nabtahil with a nearby lexical item, laʿnah, “curse,” and glossed
it as naltaʿin with the meaning of “let us curse one another.” This reading is found
across the board in Qurʾān commentaries that were produced from the third/ninth
century onwards. It is even possible to locate the origins of this interpretation with
some precision. Among later commentators, al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035),4 al-Baghawī

2 The translation is A. J. Arberry’s with my emendations.

3 Lane, Lexicon, 267.
4 Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf, 3:84.
  The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān: A Reassessment 159

(d. 512/1122),5 al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273),6 and Ibn ʿĀdil (d. 880/1475)7 credit the famous
Qurʾān reader al-Kisāʾī (d. 189/805)8 and his junior contemporary the Baṣran gram-
marian Abū ʿUbaydah (d. 209/825)9 for inventing the gloss of nabtahil as naltaʿin.
Sure enough, the latter’s Majāz al-Qurʾān is possibly the earliest extant text that
explicitly connects the verb bahala with laʿana by claiming a connection between
the sense of a she-camel left to herself and a human being cursed by the inattentive
God.10 Around the same time Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām (d. 224/838) notes that
some people, perhaps having al-Kisāʾī and Abū ʿUbaydah in mind, explain buhlat
allāh as laʿnat allāh, but he avoids reading the nabtahil of Q 3:61 as mutual cursing.11
Nevertheless, Abū ʿUbaydah’s interpretation seems to have quickly gained traction.
A few examples of glosses of nabtahil from commentaries and grammatical
works from the late-third/ninth century suffice to demonstrate the ubiquity of Abū
ʿUbaydah’s interpretation. Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), for instance, narrates a
report in his tafsīr to the effect of equating nabtahil to naltaʿin and bahalahu llāh to
laʿanahu llāh, “may God curse him.” He also suggests that the nominal form buhlah/
bahlah means “a curse.”12 Abū Bakr al-Sijistānī (d. ca. 330/942) repeats the same
reading of nabtahil as naltaʿin in his Nuzhat al-qulūb, a work on rare terms in the
Qurʾān.13 The jurist and theologian al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) is among the earliest
to use the third form verbal noun mubāhalah, which he interprets as mulāʿanah,
“reciprocal cursing,” instead of ibtihāl in the context of Q 3:61.14 Al-Zamakhsharī
(d. 538/1143) is of the same opinion but he adds that nabtahil needs to be read rather
as natabāhal because that form would fit the reciprocity of the action better.15
Following Abū ʿUbaydah, al-Zamakhsharī, too, attempts to explain the element of
cursedness in the root b-h-l by its dromedary sense: a cursed man is forsaken by

5 Baghawī, Maʿālim al-tanzīl, 2:48.

6 Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ, 5:159.
7 Ibn ʿĀdil, al-Lubāb, 5:287.
8 ʿĀlī b. Ḥamza al-Kisāʾī, the famous grammarian of Persian origin, reciter of the Qurʾān and trans-
mitter of one of the seven canonical readings, died in 189/805 in Rayy, see Ibn Ḥibbān, Thiqāt,
8:457–58 and Ibn al-Jazarī, Ghāyat al-nihāyah, 1:474–78.
9 Abū ʿUbaydah Muʿammar b. al-Muthannā was a renowned philologist. He composed two books
on difficult words in the ḥadīth and in the Qurʾān, see al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Taʾrīkh Baghdād,
15:338–46.
10 Abū ʿUbaydah, Majāz al-Qurʾān, 1:96.
11 Abū ʿUbayd, Gharīb al-ḥadīth, 4:231.
12 Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 5:465. The Arabic text is as follows: thumma nabtahil, yaqūlu thumma
naltaʿin. Yuqālu fī l-kalām: mā lahu, bahalahu llāh, ay laʿanahu llāh.
13 Sijistānī, Nuzhat al-qulūb, 199.
14 Māturīdī, Taʾwīlāt al-Qurʾān, 2:322, wa-l-mubāhalah fī lughat al-ʿarab mulāʿanah.
15 Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf, 175, thumma nabtahil thumma natabāhal bi-anna naqūlu bahlat allāh
ʿalā l-kādhib minnā wa-minkum.
160 Suleyman Dost

God similar to a she-camel released by her owner. Al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286), a close
follower of al-Zamakhsharī in his commentary, reiterates the latter’s opinion.16 A
similar connection between bahala, “to let go” and “curse” is found in al-Rāghib
al-Iṣfahānī’s (502/1108) work on gharīb, where the author glosses ibtihāl as istirsāl,
“abandonment.”17 Many later mufassirūn including Abū l-Barakāt al-Nasafī
(d. 710/1310)18, Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373),19 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Thaʿālibī (d. 875/1479),20
and Ebussuud Efendi al-ʿImādī (d. 982/1574)21 share the interpretation of nabtahil
as “let us curse one another” often citing al-Zamakhsharī’s commentary word-by-
word.
Interpretation of the verb ibtahala as a performance of mutual cursing has
obviously a lot to do with the particular occasion with which Q 3:61 and its atten-
dant section in the Qurʾān were associated. According to many chroniclers and exe-
getes, the event leading up to the revelation of Q 3:61 took place in the final years of
Muḥammad’s life when a group of Christians from Najrān, a town to the southeast
of Mecca, came to Medina as part of a series of delegations visiting Muḥammad after
he subdued the polytheists of Mecca. A composite summary of the accounts about
the visit in Muslim sources could be useful here. Exegetes often mention certain
details of this incident as part of their commentary on Q 3:61. The general outline of
the following account comes from Ibn Saʿd’s Ṭabaqāt22 and Ibn Isḥāq’s biography of
the Prophet,23 but I have simplified and summarized parts of these two and added
details from exegetical works for the coherence of the narrative.
The trip of the delegate from Najrān occurred in the ninth or tenth year of the
hijrah,24 a year during which many other tribes and towns in the Arabian Peninsula
had sent their representatives to Muḥammad in order to acknowledge his authority
and to cut a deal with him for political alliance and protection. According to Ibn
Saʿd, the Najrānī envoy consisted of fourteen members,25 three of whom are identi-

16 Bayḍāwī, Anwār al-tanzīl, 2:20.

17 Al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Mufradāt fī gharīb al-Qurʾān, 1:81.
18 Nasafī, Madārik al-tanzīl, 163.
19 Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, 2:49.
20 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Thaʿālibī, al-Jawāhir, 2:54.
21 Abū l-Suʿūd, Irshād al-ʿaql al-salīm, 2:46.
22 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 1:307–308.
23 Ibn Hishām, al-Sīrah al-nabawiyyah, 2:215–26 (tr. Guillaume, 270–77).
24 I need to mention here that Ibn Isḥāq, and following him Ibn Hishām, locates this event not
towards the end of Muḥammad’s life but to a period right after the Hijrah; see Ibn Hishām, al-Sīrah
al-nabawiyyah, 2:215–26. This seems to be the minority view, as others consider the visit from
Najrān as part of the year of delegations right before Muḥammad’s farewell pilgrimage.
25 Ibn Isḥāq counts sixty members, fourteen of whom were the ashrāf, “the notables” (Ibn Hishām,
2:215).
  The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān: A Reassessment 161

fied as their political and religious leaders. Muḥammad received his visitors from
Najrān quite hospitably, even letting them perform their prayers in his masjid as a
gesture of goodwill. The next day, when the guests had an audience with Muḥam-
mad, however, a doctrinal dispute arose concerning the veneration of the cross,
pork consumption, and, most importantly, the nature of Jesus. Muḥammad claimed
that Jesus was simply a servant of God and it would be unthinkable for God to have
a son whereas the members of the delegate held that Jesus was born without a
father and this only meant that God had sired him. The debate settled into a stale-
mate, and God revealed to Muḥammad a set of verses among which was the one
that has the word nabtahil in it.
Muslim sources tell us that at this point Muḥammad, with the cue of the freshly
revealed verse 3:61, challenged the group from Najrān to an ordeal by reciprocal
cursing to be held the next day in order to ascertain the side that was telling the
truth about Jesus. During their deliberations among themselves the Christians of
Najrān recognized that Muḥammad was a true prophet and they conceded that they
would not fare well in a cursing duel against him. The next day Muḥammad arrived
to the scene of the cursing duel with his daughter Fāṭimah, his son-in-law ʿAlī and
his grandsons al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn but found that the group from Najrān was
not willing to face him. Instead, they asked for a pact guaranteeing security and
certain religious rights to the Christians of Najrān with the condition of their mate-
rial and military assistance to the polity in Medina.
The concept of ordeal by cursing, now called mubāhalah after the exchange
between Muḥammad and the Christians of Najrān, proved to be pervasive espe-
cially within the Shiʿite tradition. Four people that Muḥammad set out to take with
him to the mubāhalah, denoted in the Qurʾān as “our sons, our wives and ourselves,”
came to be identified with the four members of the ahl al-bayt. Both the qurʾānic
verse and the story of the mubāhalah, thereby, were employed to bolster the claim
that Muḥammad accorded a special spiritual status to the members of his immedi-
ate family by choosing to bring them to the momentous event of the mubāhalah. To
this day the 24 Dhū l-Ḥijjah is celebrated among some of the Shiʿah as the annual
commemoration of the event of mubāhalah.26
The link between Q 3:61 and the visit of the Christians of Najrān is deep-rooted
in the Muslim sources and goes as far back at least as the time of Qatādah b. Diʿāmah
(d. 117/735), whose narration on the issue is mentioned by ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī

26 EI3, art. “Ahl al-Kisāʾ” (F. Daftary). See Massignon, “La Mubâhala,” and Strothman, “Die Mubāhala
in Tradition und Liturgie,” on mubāhalah in the later Islamic tradition. For a more recent overview
of mubāhalah in the contemporary Islamic discourse, see Rana Mikati, “Cross My Heart and Hope
to Die.”
162 Suleyman Dost

(d. 211/827).27 Granting that this cursing duel is indeed the occasion for Q 3:61 and its
larger pericope, is it still warranted to interpret the word nabtahil as “let us curse
one another”? Not all Muslim commentators were actually satisfied with that inter-
pretation. First of all, the commonly reflexive sense of the eighth form (iftaʿala), in
which nabtahil was conjugated, does not sit well with the reciprocal act of cursing
implied in the narrative. That is why some exegetes, including al-Zamaksharī,28
al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209),29 and al-Nīsābūrī (d. 728/1328),30 argued that nabtahil should be
read as natabāhal. This is often followed by a grammatical justification for how in
certain cases the eighth form could be used in the place of the sixth form (tafāʿala).31
A more fundamental problem with glossing nabtahil as naltaʿin was pointed
out by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) in his Mafātīḥ al-ghayb and repeated later
by al-Nīsābūrī (d. 728/1328).32 Rāzī contended that if nabtahil meant “let us curse
each other,” then the verse would be purposelessly repetitive because nabtahil is
already followed by the phrase fa-najʿal laʿnata llāhi ʿalā l-kādhibīna, “and so let us
lay God’s curse upon the ones who lie.” Besides, he argued, there is a much better
alternative interpretation: for some scholars nabtahil means “let us pray earnestly
and sincerely (najtahid fī l-duʿāʾ),” and, according to Rāzī, this interpretation could
perfectly fit the verse and its supposed historical context.33
In fact, the verb ibtahala was explained by many exegetes before al-Rāzī as a
form of supplication regardless of whether it involved a curse or not. Ibn ʿAbbās was
often credited as the originator of this interpretation.34 For him, nabtahil meant “let
us pray humbly,” nataḍarraʿ fī l-duʾā. We find similar readings among some of the
earliest exegetes such as Muqātil b. Sulaymān (d. 767), who read nabtahil exclusively
as nukhliṣ al-duʿāʾ, “let us be sincere in prayer” or “let us pray sincerely.”35 Similarly,
Abū ʿUbayd glossed al-ibtihāl as al-duʿāʾ.36 Among later commentators al-Ṭabarsī
(d. 548/1153),37 al-Fīrūzābādī (d. 817/1415),38 and al-Biqāʿī (d. 885/1480)39 opted for
Ibn ʿAbbās’s interpretation. However, the sense of “prayer” was rarely proposed as

27 ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Tafsīr, 1:396.

28 Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf, 175.
29 Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, 8:90.
30 Nīsābūrī, Tafsīr gharāʾib al-Qurʾān, 2:178.
31 Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, 8:90.
32 Nīsābūrī, Tafsīr gharāʾib al-Qurʾān, 2:179.
33 Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-ghayb, 91.
34 See Thaʿlabī, al-Kashf, 3:84 and Baghawī, Maʿālim al-tanzīl, 2:48, among others.
35 Muqātil, Tafsīr, 1:281.
36 Abū ʿUbayd, Gharīb al-ḥadīth, 4:231.
37 Ṭabarsī, Majmaʿ al-bayān, 2:252.
38 Fīrūzābādī, Tanwīr al-miqbās, 63.
39 Biqāʿī, Naẓm al-durar, 4:443.
  The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān: A Reassessment 163

the only interpretation for nabtahil and it was often mentioned as an alternative
to the interpretation of mutual cursing. For instance, al-Samarqandī (d. 375/985)
opened his discussion of Q 3:61 by glossing nabtahil as naltaʿin and then adds that
it can also be understood as “excessiveness in prayer (al-mubālaghah fī l-duʿāʾ).”40
Al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058),41 al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067),42 al-Qurṭubī,43 al-Khāzin al-Bagh-
dādī (d. 765/1363),44 and al-Shawkānī (d. 1250/1834)45 were all among the scholars
who mentioned both possibilities.
In some cases, exegetes tried to harmonize the two interpretations by reading
nabtahil as “let us pray to incur the wrath of God,” hinting that ibtihāl is a specific
type of supplication for the destruction of an opponent. For instance, Ibn Qutaybah
(d. 276/889), in his Tafsīr gharīb al-Qurʾān, glossed nabtahil as natadāʿā bi l-laʿn, “let’s
jointly pray with/for curse,” while equating buhlah with laʿnah as others did.46 A key
textual testimony for such a reading came from a verse attributed to the famous
pre-Islamic poet Labīd b. Rabīʿah:47

Among the middle-aged notables of his people

Fate beheld them and prayed

fī qurūmin48 sādatin min qawmihī

naẓara l-dahru ilayhim fa-btahal(a)

Commentators referring to this verse in their discussion of Q 3:61 do not provide

much context for it and many of them do not even cite the first hemistich. Al-Ṭabarī,
for instance, cursorily notes that the verse has to do with the destruction of a people
and, therefore, the end of the verse should be understood as “fate prayed for their
destruction (daʿā ʿalayhim bi-l-halāk).”49 Similar opinions about the verse of Labīd
can be found in the commentaries of al-Ṭūsī,50 al-Ṭabarsī,51 al-Qurṭubī,52 and
al-Māwardī53 among many others. It is very likely that the reference in the verse to

40 Samarqandī, Baḥr al-ʿulūm, 1:274.

41 Māwardī, al-Nukat wa-l-ʿuyūn, 1:398.
42 Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān, 2:484–85.
43 Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ, 5:159.
44 Al-Khāzin al-Baghdādī, Lubāb al-taʾwīl, 1:254.
45 Shawkānī, Fatḥ al-qadīr, 222–23.
46 Ibn Qutaybah, Tafsīr gharīb al-Qurʾān, 106.
47 Dīwān, ed. Ḥittī, 133; Sharḥ Dīwān Labīd, ed. ʿAbbās, 197–98.
48 quhūlin in some versions with the same meaning.
49 Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 5:465.
50 Ṭūsī, al-Tibyān, 2:484–85.
51 Ṭabarsī, Majmaʿ al-bayān, 2:252.
52 Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ, 5:159, ijtahada fī ihlākihim, “strived for their destruction.”
53 Māwardī, op. cit.
164 Suleyman Dost

dahr, that fickle and reviled notion of fortune as a force of decay and destruction in
classical Arabic poetry, led the exegetes to associate its verbal action in the verse,
i.e., ibtahala, with halāk.
Looking closely into the qasīdah from which Labīd’s verse was extracted,
however, such a reading can hardly be sustained. The verse is embedded in the final
section of a long poem composed as an elegy for Arbad, Labīd’s adoptive brother,
who tragically died by the strike of a lightning. Strictly within the common scheme
of a qasīdah, the last few verses of the poem are devoted to a praise of the qualities
of Arbad. Having mentioned that Arbad was harsh against his enemies and “sweet
like honey” toward his close relatives,54 Labīd says that his brother was among
the prominent adults of his tribe, to whom fate would look admiringly and pray
(ibtahala). The commentators’ assumption that fate prayed for the ruin of Labīd’s
fellow tribesmen simply does not suit the flow of the ode’s final section intended as
a panegyric. That is probably why two editors of Labīd’s Dīwān both commented
upon the verse in question by saying that ibtahala in this case meant to “glorifying”
or “glorifying in admiration,” sabbaḥa iʿjāban.55

***

Having laid out the opinions of exegetes on the word ibtahala, can we say that the
two distinct meanings identified for it, namely “to curse one another” and “to pray
earnestly/humbly,” are equally likely to be correct simply because they were both
more or else argued for by major Qurʾān commentators with equal frequency?
I already stated above that some exegetes like al-Rāzī clearly discarded the first
meaning despite its widespread recognition in various prominent commentaries.
Modern translators of the Qurʾān into various languages also tend to predominantly
prefer the second reading, possibly because the element of superfluity in rendering
nabtahil as “let us curse each other” next to another word of curse, laʿnah, becomes
all the more flagrant in translation.56
My inferences from the preceding discussion of Muslim historical and exegeti-
cal sources can be summarized as follows. The paucity of textual testimonies for the
trilateral root b-h-l made the interpretation of ibtahala, the only documented verbal

54 mumqirun murrun ʿalā aʿdāʾihī / wa-ʿalā l-adnayna ḥulwun ka-l-ʿasal.

55 See Labīd, Dīwān, ed. Ḥittī, 133; idem, Sharḥ Dīwān Labīd, ed. ʿAbbās, 198.
56 To give a few examples among English translations: A. J. Arberry: “let us humbly pray,” Muham-
mad Asad: “let us pray [together] humbly and ardently,” Marmaduke Pickthall: “we will pray hum-
bly,” Ali Quli Qarai: “let us pray earnestly,” Yusuf Ali: “let us earnestly pray.” Muhammad Hamidul-
lah, on the other hand, emphasizes the element of curse by using two different words for ibtahala
and laʿnah, “proférons exécration réciproque en appelant la malédiction d’Allah sur les menteurs.”
  The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān: A Reassessment 165

form of the root being in the Qurʾān and in a poem of Labīd, a challenging task
for the commentators. An exegetical narration that glossed ibtahala as “praying/
beseeching God seriously/humbly” came into circulation from very early on (defi-
nitely by the time of Muqātil b. Sulaymān and possibly going back to Ibn ʿAbbās
as some commentators attest), and this interpretation worked reasonably well
with the meaning and the context of the word in the Qurʾān and in Labīd’s verse.
However, some early scholars of the Qurʾān, most likely thrown off by the alleged
context of the qurʾānic verse, i.e., the encounter with the Najrānī Christians and
the ensuing mutual curse challenge, or by the mention of the word laʿnah, “curse,”
at the end of the verse, came up with an alternative interpretation that matched
ibtahala with an act of public ceremonial duel of cursing. The latter interpretation,
though patently later than the former and morphologically and syntactically unsat-
isfactory, gained prominence among many post-ninth century exegetes. Based on
that interpretation some denominative words from the root b-h-l such as mubāha-
lah, “performance of mutual cursing,” bahala, “to curse” or buhlah, “a curse” came
into use and were picked up by exegetes and lexicographers even though the verbal
form ibtahala appears to have been the only productive form of the root in the
earliest textual sources.
My contention, in other words, is that historically the primary meaning of the
word ibtahala in Muslim sources must have had to do with praying while the sec-
ondary interpretation that brought cursing into the picture seems to have been
“invented” within exegetical circles. This observation does not depend solely on
evidence internal to Arabic sources; cognates or near-cognates of ibtahala in other
Semitic languages can also be mustered to demonstrate that the primary interpre-
tation is more likely to be correct than the secondary one. Even though I agree
that comparative linguistic evidence for Qurʾānic lexical items should be used with
utmost caution, echoing Walid Saleh’s argument in his seminal article on the issue,57
such evidence could be worth considering in the dearth of early textual attestations
for the word ibtahala.
Akkadian seems to provide the closest parallel to the Arabic ibtahala if the
meaning of “praying” were to be accepted for it. Akkadian baʾālu (note the absence
of fricative h in Akkadian58) means “to pray to, to beseech,” the plea often being
directed to a deity and in some rare cases to a king.59 Von Soden’s Akkadian dic-
tionary, in which baʾālu is translated as anflehen, correctly identifies Arabic ibtah-
ala (and not any other verbal form) as a cognate of Akkadian baʾālu together with

57 Saleh, “The Etymological Fallacy.”

58 In fact, the argument for the Akkadian baʾalū to have h as the second radical ultimately depends
on the Arabic cognate, see Meissner, “Beiträge zum assyrischen Wörterbuch, I,” 155–56.
59 CAD, 2:2.
166 Suleyman Dost

the Classical Ethiopic behla, “to say” (see below).60 The possible parallel between
the Akkadian and the Arabic might indicate that the etymological meaning of the
root b-h-l has something to do with praying and that in the Classical Ethiopic it was
played down to the sense of “saying.” Note that neither the Akkadian nor the Ethio-
pic word has the connotations of a curse.
Establishing cognacy among b-h-l words in other Semitic languages is more
challenging especially because the biblical Hebrew (“to terrify” or “to hasten”)
and Syriac (“to be quiet”) meanings seem to have little connection to the senses of
“praying” and “saying” found in Akkadian, Ethiopic, and Arabic. Von Soden did not
count Hebrew and Syriac words as possible cognates for the Akkadian baʾālu, and
Martin Zammit, the author of a comparative Qurʾānic Arabic lexicon, considered
only Akkadian and Ethiopic as providing cognates for the Arabic ibtahala.61 Wolf
Leslau, too, is hesitant to connect the Ge’ez behla with the Hebrew and Syriac words
of the same root but recognizes the Arabic ibtahala and Akkadian baʾālu as cog-
nates of behla.62 On the other hand, James VanderKam, who wrote an article on the
etymology of b-h-l in a particularly difficult passage in Psa 2:5, argues that “behind
the various meanings of the root bhl in the Semitic languages,” including Hebrew
and Syriac, “there lies a basic sense ‘to speak passionately, excitedly, agitatedly.’”63
Even though his argument about a single underlying meaning for b-h-l in all the lan-
guages he mentions seems tenable, it is unfortunate that he readily accepted Arab
lexicographers’ position on the meaning of bahala, namely that it means “to curse.”
This leaves us with the Ge’ez evidence on b-h-l, which, I argue, could provide us
with an alternative interpretation for the qurʾānic ibtahala, an interpretation that
suits the context of Qurʾān 3:61 better than “praying.” Behla, a very common verb
in Ethiopic, means “to say, speak, call, announce, command,”64 and the related verb
tabāhala denotes all facets of reciprocal speech including arguing, debating, and
discussing. Ethiopic tabāhala is used in translating ‫ וַ ְת ַד ֵב ְרנָ ה‬in the Hebrew Bible
and kai elalēsan in the Septuagint meaning “and they spoke/and they argued” in
1 Kgs 3:22 in the context of Solomon’s judgment. Another attestation of the word
comes up in the translation of 1 Sam 10:11, when people talk to each other about
Saul’s prophesizing: tabahalū kwellomu, “they all spoke to each other.”65 Similarly, in
the New Testament apostles’ conversation among themselves (elegon pros allēlous,

60 Von Soden, Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, 1:112.

61 Zammit, A Comparative Lexical Study, 103.
62 Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Geʾez, 89.
63 VanderKam, “Bhl in Ps 2: 5 and Its Etymology,” 249.
64 Leslau, Comparative Dictionary of Geʾez, 89.
6 ወእምዝ ፡ ሶበ ፡ ርእይዎ ፡ ኵሎሙ ፡ እለ ፡ ያአምርዎ ፡ ትካት ፡ በማእከለ ፡ ነቢያት ፡ ተባሀሉ ፡ ኵሎሙ ፡ ሕዝብ ፡ በበይናቲሆሙ ፡
፡ ምንትኑ ፡ ዝንቱ ፡ ዘኮነ ፡ ላዕለ ፡ ወልደ ፡ ቂስ ፤ ሳኦልሂ ፡ ውስተ ፡ ነቢያትኑ ።
  The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān: A Reassessment 167

Mark 4:41) after Jesus calms the storm is denoted as tabāhalu ba-baynātihomu, “they
conversed among themselves.”
The sense of “debate” or “dispute” is more apparent in Mark 9:34, where the
passage concerning the discussion among apostles as to which one of them is the
greatest (dielechtēsan … tiz meizōn) is rendered in Ethiopic with the verb tabāhala.66
Similarly, the account of Jesus debating with temple officials about his authority,
told in Luke 20 and Mark 11, contains the same phrase, wa-tabāhalu ba-baynāti-
homu, “they discussed among themselves,” before the priests and elders answer
Jesus’s question.67 In another interesting example, the Geʾez Bible translates the
Hebrew word hamḏabbərîm, “they who spoke,” referring to Moses and Aaron’s
task to reason with the Pharaoh in Exod 6:27, with ella tabāhalewwo, “those who
disputed with him [the Pharaoh].” In this case, the Geʾez version seems to follow
the Septuagint, which has the same word as οἱ διαλεγόμενοι, “those who dispute,
discuss.” Lastly, and perhaps most pointedly, the word tabehla, the Gt form of the
verb behla, “to speak,” which directly corresponds to the Arabic ibtahala, appears
in the Ge’ez translation of Jude 1:9 to render the archangel Michael’s dispute with
the devil about the body of Moses.68
In light of the evidence about the Ethiopic tabāhala, is it plausible to argue
that the qurʾānic hapax nabtahil means “let us debate/argue”? One problem with
that interpretation would be that the reflexive nabtahil does not fully overlap with
the reciprocal natabāhal, but, as I have mentioned above, Muslim commentators
already justified the usage of the reflexive iftaʿala form for the reciprocal tafāʿala.
There is also at least one example of Ge’ez reflexive tabehla used for “disputing” in
the New Testament as I mentioned above. I should also add that the words nabta-
hil and natabāhal, the expected reciprocal form for “debating,” would be written
in the exact same way in early Qurʾān manuscripts, which were produced in the
earliest phase of the Arabic script with no dots and a sparing use of the matres
lectionis. Putting aside the morphological problem, there are unique advantages to
glossing nabtahil as “let us debate.” Such an interpretation would fit the context of
Q 3:61 particularly well as the verse is clearly about a Christological disagreement,
signaled by the word ḥājja, “to dispute,” at the beginning of the verse, regardless of
whether or not one acknowledges the historical authenticity of the debate between
Muḥammad and the Christian delegation from Najrān. Another reason to seek an
Ethiopic connection to the word ibtahala is that some of the most significant terms

66 All these examples are from Dillmann and Munzinger, Lexicon linguae aethiopicae, 484–85. Syl-
vain Grébaut (Supplément, 181) adds the meaning of “se contredire violemment l’un l’autre.”
6 Luke 20:5: ወተባሀሉ ፡ በበይናቲሆሙ ፡ እመሂ ፡ ንብሎ ፡ እምሰማይ ፡ ይብለነ ፡ ወእፎ ፡ ኢአመንክምዎ; Mark 11:31: ወ
ወተባሀሉ ፡ በበይናቲሆሙ ፡ ለእመ ፡ ንቤሎ ፡ እምሰማይ ፡ ይብለነ ፡ ለምንት ፡ ኢአመንክምዎ.
68 The Geʾez here has yetbahhalo translating the Greek διελέγετο, “he was reasoning/disputing.”
168 Suleyman Dost

related to Christianity in the Qurʾān appear to be paralleled in Ge’ez. Embedded in a

polemical pericope dealing with the nature of Jesus it is likely that the word ibtahala
is another one of those Classical Ethiopic loanwords in the Qurʾān among which one
can count the words “apostle” (Ar. ḥawārī, Ge. ḥawāreya), “table, last supper” (Ar.
māʾida, Ge. māʾedd) and “hypocrite” (Ar. munāfiq, Ge. manāfeq).69
Assuming that the Arabic ibtahala retained the sense of “debate” under the
influence of Ge’ez certain attestations of the words from the root b-h-l in Arabic
can be reinterpreted as reflecting the Classical Ethiopic meaning as well. A good
example for that would be the phrase attributed to Muḥammad’s companion ʿAbd
Allāh b. Masʿūd that goes as follows: man shāʾa bāhaltuhu anna surāta l-nisāʾi l-quṣrā
nazalat baʿda l-baqarati. With the conviction that the verb bāhala in the third form
means “to curse one another” Edward Lane translates this phrase in his Lexicon
as “whosoever will, I will contend with him by imprecating the curse of God upon
whichever of us is wrong, that the shorter chapter of ‘Women’ came down from
heaven after the chapter of ‘the Cow.’”70 Similar phrases beginning with man shāʾa
bāhaltuhu are also attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās.71 In each case the beginning of these
sentences can be interpreted as “I am ready to debate with anyone who claims …”
based on my suggestion above, instead of “I will invite to a cursing duel anyone
who claims …”
To conclude, I would like to propose after my survey of the evidence that, con-
trary to what many Muslim exegetes argued, the hapax nabtahil does not appear to
mean “let us curse one another” in the Qurʾān. It might mean “let us pray to/beseech
[God]” as some commentators indicated, and the Akkadian cognate supports that
interpretation. However, the absence of an object for nabtahil in the verse is prob-
lematic because the Akkadian baʾālu often governs a direct object while the later
usage of ibtahala in Arabic as “to pray” appears regularly with the phrase li-llāhi, “to
God.” What is more likely, considering the context of the verse as a dispute related to
Christology and the predominance of Ge’ez religious idiom in the Christian vocab-
ulary of the Qurʾān, is that nabtahil, or the emended form natabāhal, means “let us
debate.” In other words, my reading implies that Muḥammad must have been asked
to invite his Christian interlocutors to a debate on the nature of Christ and called
God’s curse upon the side that lies in the debate.
I do not mean with this new interpretation to question the possible historical
context(s) of the passage in Qurʾān 3:61 put forward by the Muslim tradition, nor
to argue that a cursing duel did not happen. After all, the similar practice of liʿān,

69 For Geʾez loanwords in the Qurʾān, see Nöldeke, Neue Beiträge, 46–59; Kropp, “Beyond Single
Worlds.”
70 Lane, Lexicon, 267.
71 Abū ʿUbayd, Gharīb al-ḥadīth, 4:230–31.
  The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān: A Reassessment 169

settling a claim of adultery by an ordeal of mutual cursing was known from the
Qurʾān and the ḥadīth.72 Comparably, appealing to an ordeal by fire for theologi-
cal and Christological disputes was common in the Ancient Near East.73 However,
the element of cursing in Q 3:61 should be sought somewhere other than the word
nabtahil. I end with the translation of the verse in question, now in light of the new
interpretation for ibtahala:

“And whoso disputes with you concerning him [i.e., Jesus], after the knowledge that has come
to you, say: ‘Come now, let us call our sons and your sons, our wives and your wives, ourselves
and yourselves, then let us debate (nabtahil) and so lay God’s curse upon the ones who lie [in
the debate].’”

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