The name of the city of Ramla is not an Arabic word

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Apr 28, 2014 at 13:39

Dr. Pipes

I wish that you forward this post to Robert Spencer and it is in regard to his article about: "A tour and census of Palestine 1695"

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/a-tour-and-census-of-palestine-year-1695-no-sign-of-arabian-names-or-palestinians

He wrote that the name of the city of Ramlah is really an Arabic name.

This is not true the name in Arabic is الرملة or al-Ramla and notice that the dead give away that this is a loan word from Syriac is that the last letter in the word is Ta Marbouta which would be silent and it would indeed replaces the Syro-Aramaic Alip

We are told by no other than al-Tabari in his exegesis of Surat al-Mu'minoon: 50 that the site where Mary and Jesus were hiding is really al-Ramla which means that he believed that this was the name of the site 600-700 years before Islam

http://quran.ksu.edu.sa/tafseer/tabary/sura23-aya50.html

And this indeed is evidence that the name Ramla pre-dates Islam

And we are told by Ya'qubi, in the 9th century, that the etymology of the word Ramla is from the Arabic word رمل Raml or sand and yes a grain of sand is رملة or Ramla but it is very clear that Ya'qubi is not talking about a grain of sand and he does not explain why does the name end with a Ta Marbouta, Ya'qubi would have been correct if the city is called الرمل or al-Raml and not as it is called الرملة or al-Ramla

http://www.almaany.com/home.php?language=arabic&lang_name=%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%8A&word=%D8%B1%D9%85%D9%84

So it seems to me that it makes perfect sense that the name is from Syriac ܪܡܠܐ or Ramla

http://www.assyrianlanguages.org/sureth/dosearch.php?searchkey=21870&language=id

So the name of the site is really ܪܡܠܐ or Ramla and it is Arabized by removing the last letter alip and replacing it by the Ta Marbouta and adding the Arabic al-Ta3reef or the definte article

And here is a list of the Syriac names of various places in Palestine and you will find Ramla in section 5

http://www.fouadzadieke.de/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=3256

I hope I helped

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