The Qur'an and Its Study. Adnan Zarzour
of the tongue and the hard palate... In articulating the ḍ sound, you may use either edge of the tongue, but using the left edge with the molars is easier.’ Ibn Abī Maryam, Al-Kitāb al-Muwaḍḍaḥ, vol. 1, p. 164.
5.This perhaps explains the enchantment one feels when merely hearing this language, as expressed by the German author Annemarie Schimmel: ‘We feel enchanted when we listen to music, but a Muslim is more enchanted by the mere sound of words.’
6.The root naẓara means ‘to look’ and these words mean: Yanẓur, he looks; nāẓir, on-looker; manẓūr, looked at; naẓīr, parallel or equal; naẓā’ir, things looking similar; naẓẓārah, spectators; munāẓarah, debate; minẓār, telescope or magnifying glass; manẓar, scene; muntaẓar, something yet to happen or awaited.
7.Al-Aqqad, p. 12. He adds: ‘English has words like Anne, pan, tan, ban, than, can, ran, fan and man, but these only accidentally have the same phonic pattern. Some of these words are nouns, some verbs and some prepositions. As such, the phonic pattern does not have any meaningful significance as is the case in the phonic patterns in Arabic.’
8.Some Arabic words, sentences or constructions are described as ineloquent, but this appears to be due to the fact that these, rare as they are, do not use the vocal tract properly. Such poor usage clearly appears in using several sounds that are close together in their places of articulation. An example is the word hu ‘khu‘, which includes three pharangeal sounds. Ineloquence may also be reflected in using similar sounds in consecutive words. This means that ineloquence is the result of bad usage, and not due to any poor quality of the language itself. One aspect of the inimitable musical pattern of the Qur’an is the splendid succession of Arabic sounds, regardless of their features and places of articulation, in an easy flow in the Qur’anic verses and surahs. This attains the summit of eloquence in all Qur’anic terms and sentences.
9.Annemarie Schimmel quotes the German poet Friedrich Ruchert as saying that poetry is the mother tongue of the human race. On this basis, can we say that poetic language is the mother of all languages, or the one that provides the example to follow? I think so.
10.Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur’an al-‘Aẓīm, vol. 4, p. 128.
11.Related by al-Ṭabarānī in Al-Mu‘jam al-Kabīr, with a good chain of transmission. Also related by Ibn Mājah and al-Ḥākim. The latter said that it is authentic according to the criteria set by Muslim.
12.Ibn Taymiyyah, Iqtiḍā’ al-Ṣirāṭ al-Mustaqīm, pp. 106–162.
13.Cited by A.H. Farhat, Journal of the Faculty of Jurisprudence and Islamic Studies, vol. 6, no. 13, Ramadan 1409 AH, p. 11.
14.Al-Suhaylī, Al-Rawḍ al-Unuf, vol. 2, pp. 181–182.
2
The Impact of the Qur’an on Arabic
This impact has two main aspects: historical and linguistic.
1. The Historical Impact
We may sum up the historical impact of the Qur’an on Arabic by saying that it has been its driving force on the one hand and its protective force on the other.
1.1 The Driving Force
The Qur’an was for the Arabic language a very powerful force that took it far beyond its geographical area, and even beyond the Arabian Peninsula. The Qur’an spread Arabic into Iraq, Syria, Egypt and the rest of North Africa at the time of the early Islamic expansion during the reign of the rightly-guided Caliphs and the Umayyad state. Sāṭi‘ al-Ḥuṣarī, the leading author on Arab nationalism says:
It must be remembered that prior to Islam, the Arabs were relatively small in number. The areas that could be called Arab were confined to the Arabian Peninsula and the border areas of some adjacent countries. That Arabism expanded to cover the present Arab world was only achieved by the Arab conquests under the Islamic banner. Most areas of Iraq and Syria, as well as all north Africa, from Egypt and Sudan to Morocco, were non-Arab. It only became Arabised after Islam.15
This does not mean that the Arabs remained confined to their Peninsula over a very long time. Rather, there were several migrations out of the Peninsula into these countries. However, before they adopted the message of the Qur’an, Arab immigrant tribes ‘lost their relations with their original home and went through events and developments that helped them to forget their past and become integrated with the populations of the lands where they chose to live’. Al-Ḥuṣarī adds: ‘The waves of migration that took place at the advent of Islam took an attitude that was totally different in these respects. They did not lose relations with their origin. Indeed, they remained in close contact, physically and mentally. Moreover, they were able to take their language into their new areas.’16
This was, then, the driving force which the Qur’an brought about. It may be summed up as propagating Arabic and broadening its scope.
We may add that the Qur’an clearly influenced the languages of the communities that came to believe in the Qur’an but that did not adopt Arabic as their language, such as Persian and Turkish. Its influence is even greater on languages that had drawn considerably on Arabic, such as Urdu. Moreover, all these communities adopted an essential portion of Arabic vocabulary, drawn from the Qur’anic surahs that they had to learn in order to perform their prayers and other acts of worship, some supplications, readings and religious duties and practices.
An aspect that is most worthy of note in this regard is that reading the Qur’an, vocalising its words and sounds is an act of worship for Muslims, because the challenge posed by the Qur’an includes both its wording and meanings, as we will discuss when we define the Qur’an. Therefore, a person who reads a translation of the Qur’an does not read the Qur’an. As such, the reader of a translation does not receive the reward promised by the Prophet (peace be upon him) to anyone who reads the Qur’an. He says: ‘Whoever reads a letter of God’s book receives a reward of a good act, and a good act is rewarded ten times its value. I am not saying that ‘Alif. Lām. Mīm’ is a letter, but alif is a letter, lām is one and mīm is one.’17 Thus, we have two important points to note: the first states the reward accruing to the person who recites the Qur’an, urging all Muslims to read it, and the other makes it clear that a translation is not considered the Qur’an. This is unanimously agreed by scholars throughout all generations. In this respect, Imām al-Nawawī said: ‘The Qur’an may not be read in a language other than Arabic, whether the reader can read Arabic or not, and whether in prayer or at other times. If a person reads it in a foreign tongue during prayer, his prayer is not valid. This view is agreed by our school of thought (al-Shāfi‘ī), Mālik, Aḥmad, Abū Dāwūd and Ibn al-Mundhir.’18 Thus, the spread of Arabic through the Qur’an and by its force is seen as an integral part of the message of Islam.
1.2 The Spread of lslam and Arabic
We have noted that in certain areas where Islam spread, the spread of Arabic lagged behind. This is due to a number of reasons, some of which are historical, and of which a detailed discussion is beyond this study’s scope. We may say, however, that the spread of Islam right to the farthest points of what is today Indonesia was due to the efforts of Islamic advocacy undertaken by traders from Southern Arabia, who travelled by sea to these areas. These traders, together with a small number of advocates, were able to advocate Islam among the local population, through their behaviour and advice. They did not, however, have the means to make people change their language. Later, though, Arabic did become the standard language in all Islamic schools and institutes in these areas. Similar reasons applied to the spread of Islam into sub-Saharan Africa.
Moreover, the spread of Islam was undertaken over time by the Moguls and the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks, shortly after they themselves had converted to Islam; here again, they had undertaken the message, before learning Arabic.
We note that those countries which accepted the Qur’an in the early period of Islamic expansion have retained Arabic as their language. The only exception was Persia, which started to move away from Arabic nearly three centuries later,19 as a result of ethnic and secessionist movements