The word seems to be the basic term for the complex notion of “earth”, “land” and “ground”, as evidenced by its predominance in MTO, SAE III and SAE IX (see Kogan 2015:496-497 for the discussion).
“Related to Arb. qāˁ- ‘an even place, plain or level land’ (Lane 2994) and may be borrowed from it.” (Kogan 2015:31)