سلطنIbn Fāris has no independent entry for this quadriliteral; the underlying triliteral … (root sltn)

The lexicographers in chronological order, from al-Khalīl to Lane.

No lexicographic excerpts are supplied for this entry, and none of the classical dictionaries treat سلطن as an independent Maqāyīs chapter. Historically sulṭān (power, authority, dominion) is analyzed as triliteral س-ل-ط ('to have mastery over') plus the augmentative pattern -ān (fuʿlān). Later authors, recorded in Lisān al-ʿArab and Tāj al-ʿArūs though not excerpted here, coined the denominal quadriliteral verb تسلطن, 'to act/rule as a sulṭān,' treating the noun's final -ān as if it were a root radical -ṭ-n. The entry given here reflects that secondary, back-formed quadriliteral, which is why it shows no Qurʾānic occurrence: the Qurʾān uses only the triliteral-derived noun سلطان.

What the theorists of sound symbolism would say of these letters. Speculative by nature.

In the Akbarian heaven table: sīn corresponds to 'what appears in water,' lām to the Third Heaven, ṭāʾ to the Sixth Heaven, nūn to the Fourth Heaven. Al-Dabbāgh's fatḥa-symbolism glosses sīn as a comely, delicate thing; lām as the speaker's attaining of something great and itself an indication of greatness; ṭāʾ as a thing utterly pure and clear in its own essence; and nūn as the good dwelling within the self, kindling there. A sound-symbolist might read sulṭān's letters as 'an attained greatness (lām), utterly manifest and unmixed (ṭāʾ), kindling as an inward good (nūn)' — a resonance with authority, but this is speculative letter-mysticism, not established linguistics.

The two-letter nucleus (Ibn Fāris's own chapters) and the permutations of the letters (Ibn Jinnī).

The Maqāyīs siblings supplied are all triliteral س-ل-X chapters (سلم 'soundness,' سلس 'ease/smoothness,' سلخ 'stripping off a covering,' سلت 'peeling,' سلف 'precedence,' سلح 'weapon,' سلع 'a cleft,' سلج 'swallowing,' سلوى 'ease of life'), since Ibn Fāris files entries under their first two radicals; none is the entry for سلط or سلطن itself. Juxtaposing their senses, a notion of smooth, effective removal or passage recurs (soundness, ease, stripping, swallowing); one could speculatively extend this to sulṭān as 'effective, overriding power,' but no lexicographer given here asserts the connection. Among the 24 anagrams of س-ل-ط-ن, only سلنط, سنطل, and طلنس are marked as attested Arabic words, none carrying the 'authority' sense — an instance of Ibn Jinnī's greater derivation yielding formal relatives with no live semantic tie.

Cognates in the sister languages, and whether the word was borrowed.

The underlying triliteral š-l-ṭ is Common Semitic: Hebrew šālaṭ ('to have dominion, rule,' e.g. Ecclesiastes), Jewish/Biblical Aramaic šlṭ and the noun šolṭān/šulṭān ('dominion, sovereignty,' prominent in the Aramaic chapters of Daniel), and Syriac šulṭānā ('power, authority') all match Arabic salaṭa/sulṭān closely in form and sense. The Arabic noun-pattern سلطان corresponds so precisely to Biblical Aramaic šolṭān/šulṭānā that scholars following Jeffery take the Qurʾānic abstract noun to be reinforced by, if not modeled on, that Aramaic form, even though the triliteral root is inherited Common Semitic rather than itself borrowed. The quadriliteral entry سلطن treated here — the denominal verb 'to rule as sulṭān' — is nonetheless a later, purely Arabic-internal formation built on the already-established noun, not itself a loan.