Introduction
The Quran was revealed in an environment that produced poets who had impressive mastery of Arabic and authored magnificent poetry. The Arabs were fond of poetry and honored it to the extent that they hung seven particularly impressive poems on the walls of the sacred Ka’ba. They also used poetry to ridicule their enemies and glorify themselves. A war between two tribes that lasts a few hours or a day may be followed by a war of words that may last for years. Winning or losing this less bloody war was seen almost equally significant.
The Arabic Language
The Quranic world view is closely tied to the Arabic language, which, like Hebrew and Aramaic (the language likely spoken by Jesus), belongs to the Semitic family. The Quran defines itself specifically as an ‘Arabic scripture’, and the message is shaped to the complex structure of the chosen language, a structure fundamentally different to that of any European tongue. The internal logic of Semitic languages is very different from that of Indo-European languages such as English, Latin, Sanskrit, and Persian. Every Arabic word may be traced back to a verbal root consisting of three, four or five consonants from which are derived up to twelve different verbal modes, together with a number of nouns and adjectives. This is referred to as the trilateral root, and specific words are formed from it by the insertion of long or short vowels and by the addition of suffixes and prefixes. The root as such is ‘dead’ - unpronounceable - until brought to life, that is to say vocalized, by the vowels, and it is according to their placing that the basic meaning is developed in a number of different directions. The root has sometimes been described as the ‘body’ while the vowelling is the ‘soul’; or again, it is from the root that a great tree grows. Without understanding the meanings and the related concepts of the Arabic words, it is impossible to appreciate the richness of the associated meanings, the difficulty of translating words into English, and the interrelationships among Arabic words that are obvious in the original.
Quran: Linguistically Perfect, Unique, Inimitable, Unsurpassable
Muslims are absolutely convinced of the greatness and importance of the Quran, which is usually mentioned with epithets like “noble,” “glorious,” and “pure.” What is it that so deeply moves the Muslim when reciting from the Quran, when seeing its verses, or when barely touching it?
For Muslims the Quran is a miracle which transcends human capacities. The Quran itself tells us that unbelievers could not produce any similar writing, not even ten surahs, indeed not even one. The lack of contradiction in a Book that was revealed over 23 years is in itself a miracle.
‘Will they not, then, try to understand this Quran? Had it issued from any but God, they would surely have found in it many an inner contradiction.’
The style of the Quran is inimitable and of divine beauty and power. Try as he may, no man can write a paragraph that is comparable to a verse of the revealed Book. This has to do partly with the literary merit of the text and the efficacy of the words - their transforming and saving power - that is inimitable. It moves an illiterate shepherd to tears when recited to him, and it has shaped the lives of millions of simple people over the course of almost fourteen centuries; it has nourished some of the most powerful intellects known to human records; it has stopped sophisticates in their tracks and made pious believers of them, and it has been the source of the most subtle philosophy and of an art which expresses its deepest meaning in visual terms; it has brought the wandering tribes of humanity together in communities and civilizations upon which its imprint is apparent even to the most casual observer.
The Muslims devotion to the sublime language of the Quran grew into the study of grammar and rhetoric, especially when non-Arabs entered the fold of Islam in increasing numbers and had to be taught about the peculiarities of the language of revelation. The belief that the Book was untranslatable forced those who embraced Islam to learn Arabic or at least to become acquainted with the Arabic alphabet. Many times, this led nations to actually adopt Arabic as their native languages, as is the case with all Arab nations save the Arabian Peninsula. This had immense consequences for other languages, such as Persian, Turkish, Malay and many others, who adopted the Arabic script. Quranic sayings and expressions are used as much in high literature as in daily conversations, even among non-Arabs, and Arab non-Muslims.
Shifting ‘I’ and ‘We’ in the Quran
Another major and distinctive feature of the Quran is the fundamental question of the voice of the speaker. In a text commonly regarded as being the speech of God, it is not surprising that there are many passages where the speaker is “I,” in the first-person singular. The shift from “I” to “We” for the principal speaker is very characteristic of Quranic discourse, and the use of the plural is widely accepted as an example of the “plural of majesty” or the “royal we,” where the plural is used for respect. Likewise, the Quran displays frequent shifts of voice or person, without any announcement, which first-time readers may experience as abrupt and even confusing.
Arabic literary scholars refer to this sudden change of voice by the term iltifat, meaning literally “turning to one side,” as one does when shifting attention from one person in the conversation to another. This phenomenon can be summarized as “dynamic style.”
Such a shift of voice is well known in Near Eastern literatures, such as in the opening lines of the Song of Songs: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is sweeter than wine.” This rhetorical shift of person is also common in biblical texts. The shift from “him” to “you” is a dramatic device that brings the reader into the conversation abruptly and even with a sense of shock. In a sense, dynamic style overlaps with the strongly dialogical aspect of the Quran contained in the very frequent addresses to an implied audience in the second-person singular. Usually this “you” in the singular is assumed to be the Prophet Muhammad, and some translators insert his name into the text in parentheses, or add an identification in a footnote, to underline this point, since modern English does not distinguish between the singular and plural “you.”
The point is that in all these cases the reader of the Quran internalizes an intensely conversational dialogue, echoing its reverberations in every recitation. There are literally hundreds of such cases of shifts of dynamic style to be found in the Quran, including changes in person, number, and other grammatical features. Arabic literary critics see this device as a way of conveying emphasis and dramatic effect by making unexpected moves.
Unfortunately, while this type of dynamic style is highly admired in Arabic literature, it loses much of its force in translation, since foreign readers have not formed the conventional expectations needed for this experience of pleasurable surprise. Translators need to resort to various devices, such as prefaces, parenthetical remarks, and footnotes, in order to keep the reader from going too far astray.
Detached Letters of the Quran
There is another phenomenon that one finds as a feature of Quranic texts, which defies easy categorization. Twenty-nine suras in the Quran open with isolated or detached letters of the Arabic alphabet, occasionally with a single letter (suras 38, 50, 68) but generally with a combination of anywhere from two to five letters. Some suras are entitled by the letters they begin with (suras 20, 36, 38, 41, 50). While many explanations have been advanced to their meaning, only God knows their true intent.
Legislative Verses
While legislation forms a relatively small portion of the Quran, it nevertheless remains true that there is a significant amount of regulation that takes place in the text. Much of this pertains to ritual, particularly the performance of prayer, fasting, alms, and pilgrimage, but there are also lengthy prosaic sections pertaining to property, marriage, inheritance, and criminal law.