considered right and wrong, and the principal basis of reference for most of their
sciences and wisdom.”
[Ibn Khaldun, Al-Muqaddima, vol. 3, 375.]
The effectiveness of the Qur'an was thus ensured by the fact that it represented a level of
eloquence unattainable even by their most eloquent speakers. The Qur'an remains a
book of inimitable quality, not only from the point of view of the linguist, but also
from the point of view of the intellectual and from the point of view of the masses
who can read it and understand it. The Qur’an is easy to read contrary to other sacred
Books and anybody can understand its message since it is clearly enunciated.
When Muhammad (peace be upon him) was challenged by his fellow countrymen to
present a miracle, in keeping with the tradition of other prophets, he presented the Qur'an
to them. The inimitability of the Qur'an is repeatedly emphasized in the Holy Book itself.
Thus the Qur'an challenges the disbelievers:
If the whole of mankind and the jinn were to gather together to produce
the like of this Qur'an, they could not produce the like thereof,
even if they backed each other up. [Qur’an 17:88]
The inimitability of the Qur'an is not limited to its content, but it encompasses its content
and its language. Its literary beauty exceeds anything of human origin.
The Noble Qur'an has undoubtedly helped reinforce and deepen the Arab people's
awareness of the richness and beauty of their tongue. The Qur'an gave Arabic a form
which it had hitherto lacked. From the desire to preserve the Qur'an was born the desire
to develop and refine the Arabic alphabet.
The dot system as developed by al-Du'ah after the death of prophet Muhammad (peace be
upon him).
The Qur'an also introduced a host of new themes and linguistic forms not only to the
Arabic language but to the Arab mind as well.
Taha Husayn writes:
“In its external form the Qur'an is neither poetry nor prose. It is not poetry
because it does not observe the metre and rhyme of poetry, and it is not prose
because it is not composed in the same manner in which prose was customarily
composed."
[Taha Husayn's excellent argument in his Mir'at al-Islam. P.130]
The presentation of new themes and the art of narrative style, through an
abundance of examples and a story-telling style all aimed at illustration and persuasion.
The use of illustration is one of the most effective stylistic techniques of the Qur'an.
The Qur'an also drew on the lexicons of other languages and religions, preventing
the Arabic language from being isolated and kept pure. The intention was to make
the Noble Book accessible to everyone, not to an elite.
Lexical borrowing and the existence of foreign words in the Qur'an demonstrated the
necessity and the reality of communication with the external world. Of course, it was
to become the language of half of the world!
The rhythmic patterns of speech found in Qur'anic recitations is yet another
remarkable aspect of the language of the Qur'an called Tajweed or ‘recitation’.
Arabic was able to replace such languages as Greek and Syriac in Syria and the Fertile
Crescent, Coptic, Greek, and Latin in Egypt, and Pahlavi in Persia. Syriac, a dialect of the
ancient Aramaic language, had a flourishing literature until it gave way to Arabic in the
seventh century AD, and was subsequently limited to being a vehicle for translating.
In Persia, Pahlavi, the language of the Sassanian dynasty (224 640 AD), used the Arabic
alphabet and contained a large number of Arabic loan words. Following the Arab
conquest in 640, Pahlavi gave way to New Persian, which adopted the Arabic script and
which was greatly influenced by Arabic. It is estimated that one third of the vocabulary
of modern Persian (Farsi), is of Arabic origin.
Similarly, the Arabic script was adopted for the Turkic languages (Turkish, Azerbaijani,
Turkoman, and Chuvash, Kinghiz, Kazakh, Tatar). The Turkic languages continued to
use the Arabic script until the early part of this century.
In Southeast Asia, the arrival of Islam in the fourteenth century AD brought with
it the Arabic language, whose alphabet was subsequently adopted by the Malay-
Polynesian languages. These languages were spoken by the inhabitants of the Malay
Peninsula, Madagascar, Taiwan, Indonesia, New Guinea, the Melanesian, Micronesian,
and Polynesian islands, the Phillipines, and New Zealand. These languages, because of
invasions and immigrations used simultaneously writing systems based on the Roman,
Hindic, and the Arabic alphabets.
With some variations, the Arabic script is also used today in the following
languages: Azerbaijani, Baluchi, Brahui, Dari, Fula, Kabyle, Kanuri, Kashmiri,
Kazaki, Kirghiz, Kurdish, Luri, Malay, Mazandarani, Pashto, Shilha, Sindhi,
Uighur, Urdu, and Uzbek.
The number of Arabic loan words in Spanish is in the thousands. Many
names of cities, rivers, villages, and provinces in Spain have retained their Arabic forms
since Muslims conquered Spain for eight centuries.
Among the Arabic loan words in European languages there is a host of scientific
terminology dealing with algebra, algorithms, alkali, alchemy. In addition to scientific
terms, European languages contain many everyday words of Arabic origin like ‘coffee,
sugar, flower names’.
So to speak, Arabic is not only spoken and studied by half people in the world as
language of spirituality; you and I use it in our daily utterances, maybe even without our
knowledge. In a way, the Arabic language, a language that was spoken by a minority of
people before the Revelation of the Qur'an has now conquered the entire world from Asia
to America.
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