Talk:Mount Seir

Geography (coordinates, country, geology) + modern use?
What are the coordinates? Longitude and latitude. - Thank-you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anaccuratesource (talk • contribs) 18:05, 2009 March 25 (UTC)

Where is Mount Seir, in which country? What is the geological origin of Mount Seir? How is it used today? Xenophonix (talk) 02:02, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Meaning of Sharāh and Seir
Jibal = plural of 'mountain', but I don't know if Sharāh means anything in Arabic, i.e. is it a common noun or derived from one? If yes, that would mean that "Jibal ash-Sharāh" means "Mountains of..." beyond just "Mountains of Sharāh". Rajki has: shar‘a = tendon, and shara‘a = begin, set, prescribe, legislate [Sem sh-r-‘].

Beyond the modern Arabic name and meaning: if the ancient name is indeed Seir, with an S, not a Sh, maybe the Arabic sh-words aren't relevant for the initial etymology - and guessing isn't either, anyway. Arminden (talk) 09:16, 28 November 2021 (UTC)


 * From my understanding, it ultimately comes from Proto-Semitic |śˁr | /ɬˁr/ with the meaning of 'hair'. The change of /ɬ/ → /s/ or /š/ gives the various cognates in other languages such as Arabic |šˁr | شعر‎ /šaˁr/, Hebrew |śˁr | שער /seˁār/, and Akkadian |šrtm | /šārtum/ with the dropping of ˁayin/ˁayn. Supposedly the name comes from the various shrubs/trees growing on them making the mountains look hairy. There's a number of sources that discuss this, but I don't have them at hand at this very moment (I may track down a few later on). I'm uncertain why the modern Arabic name uses Sharāh without an ˁayn. — al-Shimoni  (talk) 08:27, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Lead/definition is very poor
I had placed once two "dubious" tags in the lead, which an ephemeral editor,, has removed based on non-RS arguments (comparison with Hebrew words, Google Maps, and Arabic Wiki). Here they are again, for discussion. I can find nothing online in English to define Sharah Mountains/Jibal ash-Sharah. The very same Google Maps has Mount Seir as a dot SSE of Wadi Musa, and MapCarta has Jibal ash-Sharah (Jibal, in the plural!!) as a peak SSW of Wadi Musa - this ash-Sharah can be all there is, or just a high peak (1481 m) in a range by that name, who knows. These are not RS!
 * Jibal ash-Sharah seems to be a much more limited area - a single mount or peak, not a range.

See all the occurrences of Seir in the Hebrew Bible here. It can be that there's no "land of Seir" beyond Mount Seir, but BibleGateway's "Encyclopedia of the Bible" entry on "Seir", which they indicate to be from the The Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, suggests an evolution of the term's geographical meaning, and ends by saying that "The present writer feels that a dogmatic conclusion is unwarranted." More than that, the lead refers only to one Seir, while the article talks of two. It might be that the northern one is only mentioned once and the southern one many times, but still: the lead needs to cover both, AND to mention the fact that nothing is quite that certain in identifying biblical names with spots or areas on modern maps, at least regarding the large southern one, which also underwent an evolution. It's the Hebrew Bible, not the latest road atlas of Bavaria or the Midwest. Arminden (talk) 23:31, 3 September 2022 (UTC)
 * There seems to be a mix-up: land of Seir vs. Mount Seir.