Talk:բաբան

@Vahagn Petrosyan Is it typically to have pronunciations for Middle Armenian? Hovsepig (talk) 23:50, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

@Hovsepig: no, it was an accident. --Vahag (talk) 07:28, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

stilyard

@Vahagn Petrosyan: It is curious that the first use of this word in Old Armenian coincides with the beginning use of Arabic قَبَّان (qabbān) in the place of قَرَسْطُون (qarasṭūn, “steelyard”). The technical movement is the same. It is to be checked whether there are other meanings, particularly steelyard or a more general idea, as it also means seesaw in a dialect. I don’t know since when the Persian and the Azerbaijani qapan are used. Fay Freak (talk) 09:33, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: there are no other attested meanings in Armenian. I found Chevedden's suggestion that baban is a distortion of Arabic al-ghaḍbān "the furious one", which was supposedly used for a kind of trebuchet. See here, page 202 and here, page 256. Is that nickname indeed attested in Arabic? --Vahag (talk) 12:36, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: He has two quotes right there footnote 59,

• but there is no page 580 in vol I of Fragmenta historicorum Arabicorum edited by the Goeje.
• De Goeje’s edition of Ṭabarīy which he cites after series and page number (apparently that’s how I have to template it in {{R:ar:Goeje}} as this is 3 series, consisting of 6, 3 and 4 volumes respectively, vol. 14 Introductio, glossarium, addenda et emendanda and 15 Indices, and later comes a Ṭabari continuatus 🤦🏼). is in the Bodleain scans v. 13, where the word occurs page 1551 (١٥٥١) line 14 and page 771 of the PDF:
  وعلى الباب الخارج خمس مجانيج كبار وفيها واحد كبير سموه الغضبان

  On the outer gate there were five large mangonels and in it there was one great of its violent size.

  – he seems to have misread as “one great of its size, al-ḡuḍbān”, like an introduction of the name of a kind of implement. The key here however in my view is to get over غَضْبَان (ḡaḍbān) being used only for animals having emotions but understanding it as an attributive even of an abstractum like the size – the trebuchet itself is “beastly”, due to its beastly size, its height being the main characteristic of its appearance, for which reason we have this name غَضْبَان (ḡaḍbān) for the height سُمُوّ (sumuww).
• I can find another quote from Al-Qalqašandīy’s Dawn of the Blind:
  والحصون لا يرضى بها كل منجنيق غضبان إلا بوصال مغاضب

  The fortresses, no furious mangonel can make peace with them barring by way of most angry and abrupt intercourse.

  – you may see it is just one attribute.

I doubt the particular word for “angry” is likely as a daily name, though there were many slang names of weapons now difficult to recollect. Page 230 on your second link Black Camels and Blazing Bolts words suspiciously: “Arabic literary culture generally ignored the hybrid trebuchet, but Arabic oral culture did not. It was dubbed al-ghaḍbān (The Furious One), and this term for the hybrid machine entered both Armenian and Turkish (see below, note 60 and text)”. As if he did not find much on the Arabic so instantly goes to Turkish and Armenian where he found more, conjecturing a connection to Armenian to explain insufficient data on the Arabic side. I mean what does he know about oral culture if even the literary culture does not show much … Fay Freak (talk) 14:52, 10 January 2021 (UTC)