The Language of Quran: Easier than English

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This chapter contains an extensive discursion concerning the possibility – expressed in some narrations – that some Quranic verses contain grammatical errors or mistranscriptions. As well as analysing the reports in terms of their transmission and possible meanings, al-Suyūṭī lists the range of explanations which have been provided for these difficult verses. This exemplifies the practice of tawjīh or takhrīj (explaining and defending verses and readings) at its most necessary juncture, but these are the skills which a serious student of this volume will hone more broadly. Traditionally great emphasis was put on children memorizing the 6,200+ verses of the Quran, those succeeding being honored with the title Hafiz. "Millions and millions" of Muslims "refer to the Koran daily to explain their actions and to justify their aspirations," [xiii] and in recent years many consider it the source of scientific knowledge. [81] [82]

Chapter 36 also throws up the problem of synonymy. While it is a point of debate, there is a common view that there are no true synonyms in the Arabic language, particularly in the vocabulary of the Qur’an. [xxi] This is the basis for one of the sections in Chapter 42 in this volume. In contrast, Ibn ‘Abbās is seen here to explain one word through another, as though they are equivalent. These could be understood simply as approximations to the meanings, which in turn implies that other explanatory glosses could be as good, or better. [xxii] We should also compare the contents of this chapter to alternative explanations for the same words and verses, in other chapters. Is hayta/ hi’tu lak (12:23) to be understood as an Arabic root as we would understand in Chapter 36, or as a loanword as claimed in Chapter 38? Consolidation and further research are required.The climax of history, when the present world comes to an end, is referred to in various ways. It is 'the Day of Judgment,' 'the Last Day,' 'the Day of Resurrection,' or simply 'the Hour.' Less frequently it is 'the Day of Distinction' (when the good are separated from the evil), 'the Day of the Gathering' (of men to the presence of God) or 'the Day of the Meeting' (of men with God). The Hour comes suddenly. It is heralded by a shout, by a thunderclap, or by the blast of a trumpet. A cosmic upheaval then takes place. The mountains dissolve into dust, the seas boil up, the sun is darkened, the stars fall and the sky is rolled up. God appears as Judge, but his presence is hinted at rather than described.… The central interest, of course, is in the gathering of all mankind before the Judge. Human beings of all ages, restored to life, join the throng. To the scoffing objection of the unbelievers that former generations had been dead a long time and were now dust and mouldering bones, the reply is that God is nevertheless able to restore them to life. The word qur'ān appears about 70 times in the Quran itself, assuming various meanings. It is a verbal noun ( maṣdar) of the Arabic verb qara'a ( قرأ) meaning 'he read' or 'he recited'. The Syriac equivalent is qeryānā ( ܩܪܝܢܐ), which refers to 'scripture reading' or 'lesson'. [32] While some Western scholars consider the word to be derived from the Syriac, the majority of Muslim authorities hold the origin of the word is qara'a itself. [11] Regardless, it had become an Arabic term by Muhammad's lifetime. [11] An important meaning of the word is the 'act of reciting', as reflected in an early Quranic passage: "It is for Us to collect it and to recite it ( qur'ānahu)." [33] The Quran ( / k ʊr ˈ ɑː n/, kuurr- AHN; [i] vocalized Arabic: اَلْقُرْآنُ‎, Quranic Arabic: ٱلۡقُرۡءَانُ‎, al-Qurʾān [alqurˈʔaːn], [ii] lit. 'the recitation' or lit. 'the lecture'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, [iii] is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. [11] It is organized in 114 chapters ( pl.: سور suwar, sing.: سورة sūrah), which consist of verses ( pl.: آيات ʾāyāt, sing.: آية ʾāyah, cons.: ʾāyat). In addition to its religious significance, it is widely regarded as the finest work in Arabic literature, [12] [13] [14] and has significantly influenced the Arabic language. This corrective also applies to hasty applications of the principle of explaining the Qur’an through the Qur’an itself ( tafsīr al-Qur’ān bi-l-Qur’ān). Some argue that when a word has one meaning in most of the Qur’an, that same meaning should be assumed in all verses. An example is the denotation of tawaffī in 3:55 – does it entail that Jesus died? The fact that other senses exist in the Qur’an (see 39:42) makes this less than certain; but more fundamentally, there is nothing to prevent 3:55 itself being the exception to the general norm. A subset of the wujūh genre are the compilations of afrād: singularly occurring meanings. It can be seen clearly from this material that there is nothing strange about a word having a separate meaning in just one case. [xxvi] Muslims believe that the Quran was orally revealed by God to the final prophet, Muhammad, through the archangel Gabriel [15] [16] incrementally over a period of some 23 years, beginning on Laylat Al Qadr, [17] when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632, the year of his death at age 61–62. [11] [18] [19] Muslims regard the Quran as Muhammad's most important miracle, a proof of his prophethood; [20] and as the culmination of a series of divine messages starting with those revealed to Adam, including the Tawrat, the Zabur ( Psalms) and the Injil (Gospel). The word Quran occurs some 70 times in the text itself, and other names and words are also said to refer to the Quran. [21]

Muslims believe the Quran to be God's final revelation to humanity, a work of divine guidance revealed to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. [18] [76] We cannot have khushoo and khuzoo in our Salaah until and unless we understand what we are saying in our Salaah. Chapter 39 provides extremely important insights concerning the richness of Quranic vocabulary and the role of context in distinguishing between nuances of usage. This is an important corrective to over-insistence on ‘consistency’ in Qur’an translation: there are in fact different wujūh (facets) of meaning which may require different target words; while consistency remains a desideratum for the naẓā’ir (parallels) which actually have the same meaning. Like we observed concerning Chapter 36, the lists in this chapter also contain multiple categories, as sometimes the variation is between literal and non-literal usages, and sometimes it is between different external referents of a word. They may be seen as a fore-runner to thematic studies of Quranic terminology. [xxv]

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The Quran has sparked much commentary and explication ( tafsir), aimed at explaining the "meanings of the Quranic verses, clarifying their import and finding out their significance." [125] i] See for example his autobiography al-Taḥadduth bi-Ni‘mat Allāh, with E.M. Sartain’s introductory volume. The proper recitation of the Quran is the subject of a separate discipline named tajwid which determines in detail how the Quran should be recited, how each individual syllable is to be pronounced, the need to pay attention to the places where there should be a pause, to elisions, where the pronunciation should be long or short, where letters should be sounded together and where they should be kept separate, etc. It may be said that this discipline studies the laws and methods of the proper recitation of the Quran and covers three main areas: the proper pronunciation of consonants and vowels (the articulation of the Quranic phonemes), the rules of pause in recitation and of resumption of recitation, and the musical and melodious features of recitation. [152] See also: Sanaa manuscript and Birmingham Quran manuscript The basmala as written on the Birmingham mus'haf manuscript, the oldest surviving copy of the Qur'an. Rasm: "ٮسم الله الرحمں الرحىم".

T]here was a very early attempt to establish a uniform consonantal text of the Qurʾān from what was probably a wider and more varied group of related texts in early transmission.… After the creation of this standardized canonical text, earlier authoritative texts were suppressed, and all extant manuscripts—despite their numerous variants—seem to date to a time after this standard consonantal text was established. ii] See its translation by Feras Hamza, published by Fons Vitae in 2008 as part of the ‘Great Commentaries on the Holy Qur’an’ series by the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute of Jordan. Another translation was done by Aisha Bewley.

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Moses, in 7:143, comes the way of those who are in love, he asks for a vision but his desire is denied, he is made to suffer by being commanded to look at other than the Beloved while the mountain is able to see God. The mountain crumbles and Moses faints at the sight of God's manifestation upon the mountain. In Qushayri's words, Moses came like thousands of men who traveled great distances, and there was nothing left to Moses of Moses. In that state of annihilation from himself, Moses was granted the unveiling of the realities. From the Sufi point of view, God is the always the beloved and the wayfarer's longing and suffering lead to realization of the truths. [133] Men reading the Quran at the Umayyad Mosque, Damascus, Syria More generally, it is possible to observe these technical grammar debates and move past them to ponder on a deeper meaning intended by the word choice. I share a beautiful example from Muḥammad ‘Abd-Allāh Drāz (d. 1958) under the discussion on ka-mithli in 42:11. The method here is to notice the issue at hand, and consider whether there is an alternative to waving it away as ziyāda, ta‘āqub or majāz; or a good explanation for those features to be employed. For example, it may simply be stated – as here in Chapter 40 – that yurīdu in 18:77 means yakādu, in that the wall was “about to collapse”, as it cannot be said to “want to collapse”; but this should not prevent us considering the imagery in portraying this wall as though it were an old man on his last legs! [xxx]

This article is about the central religious text of Islam. For other uses, see Quran (disambiguation).

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Translating the Quran has always been problematic and difficult. Many argue that the Quranic text cannot be reproduced in another language or form. [142] Furthermore, an Arabic word may have a range of meanings depending on the context, making an accurate translation even more difficult. [143] The clearest evidence for al-Suyūṭī’s adherence to the broad-based traditional approach to Qur’an interpretation, with language and grammar as key hermeneutical tools, is this work itself; particularly the chapters selected for this volume (which constitute the second quarter of the work). This encyclopaedic collection of eighty chapters (designated ‘types’, anwā‘) was to serve as the introduction to another planned exegesis , Majma‘ al-Baḥrayn wa-Maṭla‘ al-Badrayn, in which al-Suyūṭī aimed to combine narration ( riwāya) and analysis ( dirāya). [vi] In addition to and independent of the division into chapters, there are various ways of dividing the Quran into parts of approximately equal length for convenience in reading. The 30 juz' (plural ajzāʼ) can be used to read through the entire Quran in a month. Some of these parts are known by names—which are the first few words by which the juzʼ begins. A juz' is sometimes further divided into two ḥizb (plural aḥzāb), and each hizb subdivided into four rubʻ al-ahzab. The Quran is also divided into seven approximately equal parts, manzil (plural manāzil), for it to be recited in a week. [11] Revered by pious Muslims as "the holy of holies", [77] whose sound moves some to "tears and ecstasy", [78] it is the physical symbol of the faith, the text often used as a charm on occasions of birth, death, marriage. Traditionally, before starting to read the Quran, ablution is performed, one seeks refuge in Allah from the accursed satan, and the reading begins by mentioning the names of Allah, Rahman and Rahim together. [ citation needed] Consequently,