# Carthage, Qart-ḥadašt, קרת חדשה



## psxws

Hey guys, I'm interested in the Arabic equivalent (if it exists) of Phonecian Qart-ḥadašt, Hebrew קרת חדשה 

I know nowadays it is known as 
قرطاج 
in Arabic, but that seems like a phonetic borrowing rather than the equivalent in Semitic roots, if they exist in Arabic.

Did it have any other names in Classical Arabic, or even pre-Islamic Arabic (contemporary with Carthage)?

In Phonecian, it meant "New City", so I think the first element could be equivalent to
قرية

But does ḥadašt have any cognates in Arabic, current or ancient?

Note that the final t is probably equivalent to a ta marbuta, so given root correspondences in Semitic, in Arabic it could be either of these two (not counting possible differences in vowel length):

 حدشة / حدسة (my guess for an equivalent adjectival form might be حديسة / حديشة but that is pure conjecture)

Would either ح-د-س or ح-د-ش make sense as roots, with the possible meaning of "new", or an earlier related meaning?

I can't find anything for حدش as a root, and حدس seems to be related to guessing, intuition, assumption (I guess I could see a connection with "new", but it's very tenous). I'd like to check Lisaan al-Arab or al-Mawrid for these roots, since they tend to have earlier & more varied examples, but it's too difficult for me to understand their definitions in Arabic (How I wish I had access to English-languag versions of these works!).

I know it's normally جديدة, by the way. But Phonecian evidently used a different root here, so I'm looking for any possible Arabic cognates of this root.

Sorry for the terrible formatting, RTL wasn't playing too nice on my browser. Thank you guys!


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## fdb

The modern Arabic name قرطاج is borrowed from French Carthage. The city does not seem to be mentioned in Classical Arabic sources; the ancient name apparently died out before the Muslim conquest of North Africa. Etymologically, Phoenician ḥ-d-š is cognate with Arabic حديث “new”.


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## psxws

Thank you, I thought of  حديث  but this page(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages#Phonology) made me think that  ث would correspond with _ṯ, _not _š_.

Now I see that I was mistakenly looking at the row for Ugaritic, not Phoenician, so š could indeed be  ث in Arabic. That makes a lot more sense, thank you.

So, the whole cognate would be  قرية حديثة. Awesome.

Do you know what قرطاج was called before French rule?


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## analeeh

Are we sure it's borrowed from French Carthage and not rather a much older borrowing from the Latin/Greek name? A borrowing with ق and ط for /k/ and /t/ certainly seems much more reminiscent of older Arabic borrowings, whereas I'd expect a modern borrowing to be something like كرتاج.  Also, given that the city was conquered by the Arabs from the Byzantines, it would surprise me if the name wasn't mentioned anywhere.


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## Schem

Keep in mind that while Canaanite kiryat and medinat mean city and state, respectively, MSA قرية and مدينة mean village and city, respectively, while state is دولة. So القرية الحديثة would be somewhat of a false cognate with المدينة الحديثة being more accurate.


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## psxws

Thank you, Schem. Yes, I know قرية is village, not city, but I was looking for the etymological cognate. Good point, though.


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## WadiH

analeeh said:


> Are we sure it's borrowed from French Carthage and not rather a much older borrowing from the Latin/Greek name? A borrowing with ق and ط for /k/ and /t/ certainly seems much more reminiscent of older Arabic borrowings, whereas I'd expect a modern borrowing to be something like كرتاج.  Also, given that the city was conquered by the Arabs from the Byzantines, it would surprise me if the name wasn't mentioned anywhere.



You are correct. It appears in Yaqut's Mu'jam (citing older sources) as قرطاجنّة (_QarTaajannah_) and it's described in some detail.  It's also referred to as قرطاجة (_Qartaajah_) in Al-Marrakishi's history of the Maghreb from the same era.  The rendering of it as قرطاج _Qartaaj _may be a French influence, though.


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## fdb

T


Wadi Hanifa said:


> You are correct. It appears in Yaqut's Mu'jam (citing older sources) as قرطاجنّة (_QarTaajannah_) and it's described in some detail.  It's also referred to as قرطاجة (_Qartaajah_) in Al-Marrakishi's history of the Maghreb from the same era.  The rendering of it as قرطاج _Qartaaj _may be a French influence, though.


Thank you for the classical references, which I had overlooked. قرطاجنّة is late Latin Carthagenna, classical Latin Carthago, accusative Carthaginem; obviously not the older Punic name Qart-ḥadašt.


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## Hemza

Wadi Hanifa said:


> You are correct. It appears in Yaqut's Mu'jam (citing older sources) as قرطاجنّة (_QarTaajannah_) and it's described in some detail.  It's also referred to as قرطاجة (_Qartaajah_) in Al-Marrakishi's history of the Maghreb from the same era.


Also, the French name includes "th" (which sounds "t" in French) which also hints that it may be a borrowed word in French from another language. There is also the Spanish city of _Cartagena _(Carthagène in French) so I think the name isn't a borrowing from French.


> The rendering of it as قرطاج _Qartaaj _may be a French influence, though.


Certainly since French tends to cut off the ending vowel of many words which ends with "o" or "a" in Spanish and Italian, turning into a "e" in French (which is a "mute" sound if I may call it this way) or simply the letter(s).


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## WadiH

fdb said:


> Thank you for the classical references, which I had overlooked. قرطاجنّة is late Latin Carthagenna, classical Latin Carthago, accusative Carthaginem; obviously not the older Punic name Qart-ḥadašt.



Yes, that's what @analeeh was suggesting (that it came into Arabic through Latin or Greek when the Arabs took the area from the Byzantines).


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## djara

fdb said:


> the ancient name apparently died out before the Muslim conquest of North Africa.


The name qartajinna قرطاجنة has survived in the name of one of the Tunis City's oldest gates, Bab Qartajinna باب قرطاجنة. Although the gate proper was demolished a long time ago, the site is still called by that name.


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## Mahaodeh

Schem said:


> Keep in mind that while Canaanite kiryat and medinat mean city and state, respectively, MSA قرية and مدينة mean village and city, respectively, while state is دولة. So القرية الحديثة would be somewhat of a false cognate with المدينة الحديثة being more accurate.


True, but this distinction between village and city in MSA is new, in Classical Arabic there was no such distinction. In fact, I recall at least two times when the Quran referred to the same city once as قرية and once as مدينة.

Accordingly, the cognate would be true not false.


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## WadiH

In 'Classical Arabic' (and older forms of Arabic), _qaryah/t_ does indeed mean city in the same sense as Canaanite.  There are a number of ancient _qaryats _in Saudi Arabia today, and all of them were major towns in their time (قرية ذات كهل، قرية سدوس، قرية تبوك، القريتان).  Schem did specifically say 'MSA', though.


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## Mahaodeh

I understand that he specified MSA, my point is that it’s not a false cognate because the word originally did mean city.


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## raamez

It would have been weird if qaryah didn't mean city when Macca was called/known as أم القرى.
It is also interesting that the punic word doesn't have a final ya' when in fact the root is qry and hence the derived قرية مكان القرى أي الالتقاء والتجمع


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## WadiH

I think that's an innovation of Punic -- in ancient Canaanite the 'y' was preserved.


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