Maǧnūn and mabrūk: participles in the quest of verbs

What is it about?

In this article, we propose to see in the locative sentence bihi ǧinna the very basis of the noun maǧnūn (“mad, crazy”): the two expressions are synonymous, having the same distribution in the Koran (Kor 34, 46 and 81, 22). The passive ǧunna (“to be mad, crazy”), the only related verb attested, is back-formed from maǧnun and then coincides with the passive of ǧanna (“to hide”). This coincidence explains the contamination of one lexical family by another: according to the Arab tradition, the djinns derive their name from the fact that they are hidden (iǧtinān). Maǧnūn is not the only example of a participle without a verb. We can also cite mabrūk (“blessed”), linked to the noun baraka (“blessing”), and the active participles ǧāhiz (“ready”) and sāliḥ (“armed”), back-formed from the verbs ǧahhaza (“to prepare”) and sallaḥa (“to arm”), themselves derived from the nouns ǧihāz (“equipment”) and silāḥ (“weapon”). All these words remind us that word formation and interpretation do not result from the simple cross between a root and a pattern.

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