Semantics examines topics and phenomena such as semantic change and the factors leading to these changes, among others. Scholars of semantics conduct diacronic studies observing the semantic change of a word within a certain period of time. Such a change sheds lighton the transformation of the intellectual world of the people using this word. Thus, semantic studies are significant for social sciences and often conducted within an interdisciplinary framework. A certain word turns into a term in a process during which it takes up new meanings in particular fieldsbesides its dictionary meaning. The words in the religious terminology of Islam have gained new theological meanings within the religious literature of Muslims and become part and parcel of this new Weltanschauung. Though among all its meanings, a particular meaning of a pre-Islamic word usually became an Islamic term after the advent of Islam, it is hard to say that they un-derwent no changes as these Arabic words entered into a new climate of opinion and weretinged by this climate. A religious nomenclature has gradually shaped within the Islamic worldview, a process in which the Qur’ānhas played a major role. In this study, I work out a semantic examina-tion in a specific period of the word “shahīd”which comprises creedal, military, legal, and political meanings. I seek to clarify which meanings of “shahīd”had already existed before the advent of Islam and which others were gradually incremented to it during the revelation of the Qur’ānand in the exegeses of the Qur’ān.To observe the semantic change of an Islamic term, the term should be examined throughout at least two main periods of time, and in this study these periods are the Jāhilīyah period and the period after the very advent of Islam. The term might have undergone further semantic changes in the later pe-riods after the advent of Islam; various events might have caused such changes. This work focuses on the change of this word between two pivotal periods, the first being the Jāhilīyah’s poetryand the second being the formation of the Qur’ān, that is, the Qur’ānictext. I employ the method of descrip-tional analysis and explore the meanings of the word contextually, where the word and its derivati-ves appear. Though the study focuses on the declension “shahīd”in particular, the verb declension “sha-hi-da”the name “sha-hā-dah”and the plural “shu-ha-dā”are occasionally touched upon.First, I scan the occurrances of the word “shahīd”in seven classical dictionaries of the Arabic langu-age, dictionaries that belong to different periods of the language itself, and I explore the word from an etymological perspective. My examination show that the root “sh-h-d”in these dictionaries me-ans seeing, knowing or witnessing; the word “shahīd”seer, knower, witness, martyr; and the word “shahādah”decisive or certain news and being witness. There are multiple testimonies purporting to explain the reasons why someone killed “in the path of God”is called a “shahīd”(martyr), and I explore these testimonies in depth. These reasons include the explanation that the one killed in the path of God has witnessed the truth (ḥaqq), the war, and is still alive at the divine echelon (‘indallāh), that God and angels have witnessed her/his witnessing the truth by the sign of her/his blood and the place (s)he is martyred, and also that her/his faith has been witnessed. A word in this form, i.e. shahīd, can possess both meanings, the doer (fā'il) and the done (maf’ūl).Second, I scan the instances of “shahīd”in the Jāhilīyah poetry and explore its usage in this period, along with its derivatives. Though the reliability of the Jāhilīyahpoetry is disputed by various scho-lars, poetry from this period continue to be important sources in linguistic studies on the develop-ment and transformation of the Arabic language. In a Jāhilīyah poem, “shahīd”occurs in a couplet with the meaning “the onewho has witnessed and participated in a war or an attack.”In the last part of this work I scan the Qur’ānic instances of “shahīd”in the exegeses of al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr, and al-Zamakhsharī. In determining the Qur’ānic verses where “shahīd”occur, I have used the website of thePresidencyof Religious Affairsof Turkey. I observe that “shahīd”is used to refer to the God (Allāh), Muhammad, Jesus, other prophets, and the ‘ummaof Muhammad. As an attribute of God, “shahīd”means omniscient, seer of everything.As an attribute of Muhammad, it primarily me-ans Muḥammad has witnessed the Muslims, their deeds and faiths, and also his (Muḥammad’s) pro-selytizing for them. Other instances of the word include that the ‘ummaof Muḥammad would witness (shahida)other ‘ummas, that Jesus will witness on the Day of Judgment (Yawmal-Qiyāmah) that he proselytized the religion of God, that each prophet is the witness of his own ‘ummaand that they (prophets) will witness they proselytized what they are given to them by the God.In the exegeses mentioned, the instances of “shahīd”include the meanings of angel, witness (as a legal term and to a debt), and martyr in the path of God. Therefore, whereas the word had been used as meaning a witness to or a participater in a war in the Jāhilīyah period, its meaning morphed pri-marily into the meaning of a martyr as it took up a holy meaning in the Qur’ān, referring to those killed in the path of God. The transformation in between is not only from a naturalistic meaning towardthe holy meaning of a martyr but also to the meaning of witnesser to the truth. This study focuses on the semantic change of the word only from the Jāhilīyah period to the Qur’ānictext and its exegeses; the changes the word underwent throughout other periods of the Arabic language could be explored in further studies.

Keywords Semantics, Contextuality, Jāhilīyah Poetry, Islamic Term, Shahīd