Talk:خليل

Types of friends

@Roger.M.Williams: I am too anti-social to apprehend the fine granularity of this term in Arab society across ages, or have traversed English-speaking lands to know all implications of possible translations; that’s the trick of learning so many languages, just ignore etiquette people are otherwise too fussy about, it is disputed anyway and foreigners are othered anyway, but there is some rough thing I did grasp: Originally the now second sense was a subsense of the first and I discerned a use for a so-called romantic boyfriend, as one now puts it in the Anglophone world. Clearly so subtitled, have they translated the wrong sense? I don’t know what that Saudi was IP up to, although I am aware of the circumstance that the requirements (or tatbestandliche Voraussetzungen, as our jurists would put it) for valid marriage are so low that this whole state of romantic friendship and cohabiting non-married couples may not well exist as one must expect a straight transition from courtship to marriage.

Most other languages have no or only ambiguous terminology as well, and for contrast I positively know for the former Soviet Union that the concept is strange and without term as they do marry fast, though this is a consequence of the Bolshevik reforms. So are we correct to affirm that all of خَلِيل (ḵalīl), صَدِيق (ṣadīq), رَفِيق (rafīq), حَبِيب (ḥabīb), correspondingly the ـَة (-a) form, have this sense, at least as a neologism chosen by some writers and discourses, at least to be mentioned in usage notes if misleading about a more literal sense as a gloss? There are also so many Arabs in Germany now—*preying on our women*—that I need to wonder what their term of choice is.

At least our translation tables give خَلِيل (ḵalīl) as the first term for paramour even and not only that sense of boyfriend. Fay Freak (talk) 11:46, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: You are perfectly right. The word occurs in al-Baḡawī's Quranic commentary

قَوْلُهُ تَعَالَى : ( وَلَا تَنْكِحُوا الْمُشْرِكَاتِ حَتَّى يُؤْمِنَّ ) سَبَبُ نُزُولِ هَذِهِ الْآيَةِ أَنَّ أَبَا مَرْثَدٍ الْغَنَوِيَّ بَعَثَهُ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ إِلَى مَكَّةَ لِيُخْرِجَ مِنْهَا نَاسًا مِنَ الْمُسْلِمِينَ سِرًّا فَلَمَّا قَدِمَهَا سَمِعَتْ بِهِ امْرَأَةٌ مُشْرِكَةٌ يُقَالُ لَهَا عِنَاقُ وَكَانَتْ خَلِيلَتَهُ فِي الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ فَأَتَتْهُ وَقَالَتْ : يَا أَبَا مَرْثَدٍ أَلَا تَخْلُو؟ فَقَالَ لَهَا وَيْحَكِ يَا عَنَاقُ إِنَّ الْإِسْلَامَ قَدْ حَالَ بَيْنَنَا وَبَيْنَ ذَلِكَ قَالَتْ : فَهَلْ لَكَ أَنْ تَتَزَوَّجَ بِي؟ قَالَ نَعَمْ وَلَكِنْ أَرْجِعُ إِلَى رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ فَأَسْتَأْمِرُهُ فَقَالَتْ أَبِي تَتَبَرَّمُ؟ ثُمَّ اسْتَغَاثَتْ عَلَيْهِ فَضَرَبُوهُ ضَرْبًا شَدِيدًا ثُمَّ خَلَّوْا سَبِيلَهُ فَلَمَّا قَضَى حَاجَتَهُ بِمَكَّةَ وَانْصَرَفَ إِلَى رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ أَعْلَمَهُ بِالَّذِي كَانَ مِنْ أَمْرِهِ وَأَمْرِ عَنَاقَ وَمَا لَقِيَ بِسَبَبِهَا وَقَالَ : يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ أَيَحِلُّ لِي أَنْ أَتَزَوَّجَهَا؟ فَأَنْزَلَ اللَّهُ تَعَالَى ( وَلَا تَنْكِحُوا الْمُشْرِكَاتِ حَتَّى يُؤْمِنَّ ) ― Allah says, "Do not marry [or "sleep with"] the associators till they believe". The occasion of the verse was that Abū Marṯad al-Ḡanawī, whom the Prophet of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, had sent off to Mecca to sneak a number of Muslims secretly, was spotted when he arrived there by a women of the associators named ʿAnāq, who was his his bedfellow back in the era of ignorance. Thus, she came to him and said, "Abū Marṯad, would you like to 'take me aside'?", and he said to her, "Slow down, ʿAnāq! Our faith now keeps us away from this!" Thus, she said, "Will you marry me, then?" "Sure!" he said, "but I must go back to the Prophet and ask him first." So she said, "Huh, now you are weary of me?" Then she cried out, and he was beaten up severely, and then they let him go. When he finished his task in Mecca afterward and set out back to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, he recounted to him what was between him and ʿAnāq and what he had gone through because of her. "O Prophet!" he said to him, "is it lawful for me to wed her?" Thereupon, Allah revealed this verse, "Do not marry [or "sleep with"] the associators till they believe".

I cannot say what it was in the IP's mind, but I suspect that he was thinking of the Quranic use of the term (that is, as an Islamic epithet of Abraham), but semantically, the "sex partner or companion" meaning is inferable from the root, which signifies "seclusion", hence "privateness".

The other substitutes you have listed sound fine, though رَفِيق (rafīq) is vaguer to me than the rest are. In any case, the Quranic choice is خِدْن (ḵidn, “companion”).

As for the Arabs preying on women in Germany or elsewhere, I don't think I can tell what the usual word in each of their dialects would be. In Egyptian, though, it would be as in English, صاحبة (“girlfriend”), with the same ambiguity as in English, hence the conscious avoidance of this term in the characterization of male-female non-sexual relationships. Roger.M.Williams (talk) 12:53, 5 February 2022 (UTC)