Historical and Cultural Semantic Approaches to the Qur'anic Term "Sabīl"

According to Qur'anic verses, "Sabīl" is considered as the most frequent term conveying "Path" or "Way" in the context of revelation. Due to different usages in the wide range of textual contexts, the term "Sabīl" has attracted the attention of Muslim lexicographers and exegetes. That's why the specialists in "al-Wujūh wa al-Naẓā'ir" have mentioned 14 meanings for "Sabīl" in the Holy Qur'an. However, Muslim scholars have had not any information about the process of meaning-formation of "Sabīl", its semantic components and the features of this type of way in the context of revelation. Applying historical and cultural semantic approaches, this study attempts to explain the accurate meaning of "Sabīl" at the time of revelation. According to this study, the homonymous root "SBL" has two different origins: on the one hand, the root is formed by adding the preformative /S/ to the stem "BL", and on the other hand, it is formed by adding the affirmative /L/ to the stem "SB". Moreover, the present research proves that the term "Sabīl" had a couple of unique features in Qur'anic Arabic: (1) Private roads that were not definite, transparent and visible. (2) Roads which could not be passed through on without experienced guides.