Cahiliye Şiirlerinden Kur’an Metnine ‘Şehit’ Teriminin İçerdiği Anlamlar
Meanings of the Term ‘Shahīd’ from the Jāhilīyah Poetry to the Qur’ānic Text

Summary/Abstract: Semantics examines topics and phenomena such as semantic change and the factors leading to these changes, among others. Scholars of semantics conduct diacronic studies observing the semantic change of a word within a certain period of time. Such a change sheds light on the transformation of the intellectual world of the people using this word. Thus, semantic studies are significant for social sciences and often conducted within an interdisciplinary framework. A certain word turns into a term in a process during which it takes up new meanings in particular fields besides its dictionary meaning. The words in the religious terminology of Islam have gained new theological meanings within the religious literature of Muslims and become part and parcel of this new Weltanschauung. Though among all its meanings, a particular meaning of a pre-Islamic word usually became an Islamic term after the advent of Islam, it is hard to say that they un-derwent no changes as these Arabic words entered into a new climate of opinion and were tinged by this climate. A religious nomenclature has gradually shaped within the Islamic worldview, a process in which the Qur’ān has played a major role. In this study, I work out a semantic examina-tion in a specific period of the word “shahīd” which comprises creedal, military, legal, and politi-cal meanings. I seek to clarify which meanings of “shahīd” had already existed before the advent of Islam and which others were gradually incremented to it during the revelation of the Qur’ān and in the exegeses of the Qur’ān. To observe the semantic change of an Islamic term, the term should be examined throughout at least two main periods of time, and in this study these periods are the Jāhilīyah period and the period after the very advent of Islam. The term might have undergone further semantic changes in the later periods after the advent of Islam; various events might have caused such changes. This work focuses on the change of this word between two pivotal periods, the first being the Jāhilīyah’s poetry and the second being the formation of the Qur’ān, that is, the Qur’ānic text. I employ the method of descriptional analysis and explore the meanings of the word contextually, where the word and its derivatives appear. Though the study focuses on the declension “shahīd” in particular, the verb declension “sha-hi-da” the name “sha-hā-dah” and the plural “shu-ha-dā” are occasionally touched upon. First, I scan the occurrances of the word “shahīd” in seven classical dictionaries of the Arabic language, dictionaries that belong to different periods of the language itself, and I explore the word from an etymological perspective. My examination show that the root “sh-h-d” in these dictionaries means seeing, knowing or witnessing; the word “shahīd” seer, knower, witness, martyr; and the word “shahādah” decisive or certain news and being witness. There are multiple testimonies purporting to explain the reasons why someone killed “in the path of God” is called a “shahīd” (martyr), and I explore these testimonies in depth. These reasons include the explana-tion that the one killed in the path of God has witnessed the truth (ḥaqq), the war, and is still alive at the divine echelon (‘indallāh), that God and angels have witnessed her/his witnessing the truth by the sign of her/his blood and the place (s)he is martyred, and also that her/his faith has been witnessed. A word in this form, i.e. shahīd, can possess both meanings, the doer (fā'il) and the done (maf’ūl). Second, I scan the instances of “shahīd” in the Jāhilīyah poetry and explore its usage in this pe-riod, along with its derivatives. Though the reliability of the Jāhilīyah poetry is disputed by vari-ous scholars, poetry from this period continue to be important sources in linguistic studies on the development and transformation of the Arabic language. In a Jāhilīyah poem, “shahīd” occurs in a couplet with the meaning “the one who has witnessed and participated in a war or an at-tack.” In the last part of this work I scan the Qur’ānic instances of “shahīd” in the exegeses of al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr, and al-Zamakhsharī. In determining the Qur’ānic verses where “shahīd” occur, I have used the website of the Presidency of Religious Affairs of Turkey. I observe that “shahīd” is used to refer to the God (Allāh), Muhammad, Jesus, other prophets, and the ‘umma of Muhammad. As an attribute of God, “shahīd” means omniscient, seer of everything. As an attribute of Muhammad, it primarily means Muḥammad has witnessed the Muslims, their deeds and faiths, and also his (Muḥammad’s) proselytizing for them. Other instances of the word include that the ‘umma of Muḥammad would witness (shahida) other ‘ummas, that Jesus will witness on the Day of Judgment (Yawm al-Qiyāmah) that he proselytized the religion of God, that each prophet is the witness of his own ‘umma and that they (prophets) will witness they proselytized what they are given to them by the God. In the exegeses mentioned, the instances of “shahīd” include the meanings of angel, witness (as a legal term and to a debt), and martyr in the path of God. Therefore, whereas the word had been used as meaning a witness to or a participater in a war in the Jāhilīyah period, its meaning morp-hed primarily into the meaning of a martyr as it took up a holy meaning in the Qur’ān, referring to those killed in the path of God. The transformation in between is not only from a naturalistic meaning toward the holy meaning of a martyr but also to the meaning of witnesser to the truth. This study focuses on the semantic change of the word only from the Jāhilīyah period to the Qur’ānic text and its exegeses; the changes the word underwent throughout other periods of the Arabic language could be explored in further studies.

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