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Commenced: 01st August, 2023
Concluded:
Notice for the reader
This page will undergo heavy additions and editing changes in coming several months – most likely every few days, or at times, even on a daily basis. Those who are relying on the material presented here for their independent self-study of The Qur'an do so at their own risk.
The intention behind putting this page up in its raw form, along with all its editorial embarassments, is that crafting of a page like this is a life-long project with an unlikely date of settlement: it is highly probable that it may be not even reach completion. Therefore, given the subject matter involved — evolving an understanding of The Qur'an incrementally — there is little point in tarrying. For, there may always be some grains of use that a sincerely inquiring and committed mind may stand to gather from this page.
Debt is due to three individuals – and the respective character of the efforts they represent – that have influenced the author's own engagement with The Qur'an. Ahmed Ali, for stretching to the hilt the elasticity that the English language had on offer, to give a firm sense of the melodic texture of The Qur'an's voice; Nouman Ali, through his Bayyinah Institute, for imbuing a sense of the cultivated refinement required when handling the words of The Qur'an; and without fail, to Sam Gerrans, who has convincingly demonstrated that The Qur'an is a record of unquestionable intellectual integrity, calling of which into doubt, will eventually prove to be a fool's errand.
His pain-staking (not to mention, unpaid and self-funded) study of each word of The Qur'an to arrive at a translation that is solidly consistent has provided an enviably comfortable foundation for others to rest their weary minds upon. At one level, it seems unfair that many may skim the fat off the milk carefully collected by one man. This labour of love of his has, in turn, led him to open doors to the inherent architecture of The Qur'an, an architecture that has remained otherwise a mystery to many a scholars before.
In particular, an untiring engagement with his solution to what are known as the mysterious letters and the exegetical framework which can be abstracted from it, stands to convince anyone that The Qur'an is not a book to decorate the shelf. Rather, it has a gravity whose weight is not easy to shoulder for those whose hearts are corrugated by base emotions. His generosity in making his work publicly and freely available at quranite dot com, as well as the entire translation interactively accessible at reader dot quranite dot com, outshines, perhaps, even his scholarly sabr and considerable intellectual achievements.
Examples of these men demonstrate that The Qur'an will cater to the diligent student of every hue. To use a Spinozan turn of phrase: The Qur'an is a composition of infinite wisdom possessed of infinite dimensions, to which may latch an infinite multitude of mankind. While men of stature dedicate a material part of their God-given gifts to study the word of God, the word remains accessible to the laity too.
Nowhere is these more evident than the countless individuals whose imprints are all over the internet and who have addressed different aspects of either the Arabic language or The Qur'an itself. Amongst the many, the following beg mention as their work is used directly or indirectly in what follows:
1. al-Quran: The Linguistic Miracle.
2. corpus dot quran dot com housed at the Language Research Group, University of Leeds.
3. talkislam dot info
4. learningarabiconline dot com for preliminary lessons on Arabic Morphology.
This page, simply, is an addition to this list. While influenced by all of the above, and more, it aims to strike a different route to meet The Qur'an. In doing so, it hopes to make it, hopefully, more intuitive and inviting to more individuals, whose hearts today burn with an uncalled for aversion to the word 'Quran' itself. Whether it meets its aim will depend on the honesty of the hands that write what follows. That is, always and without exception, a matter of the sincerity of the heart which directs the hands. This is, in essence and effect, the sum and substance of the contents of this page.
Why the need for such a page?
Picking a copy of The Qur'an is an exercise in exhilaration and exasperation in equal measure. A cursory flipping of its pages arrests attention at many a points: there are ayats (the conventional designation of the smallest textual units into which written version of The Qur'an is divided) which, by their sheer linguistic beauty, change the beat of the heart. On the other hand, there are ayats which may be read at a stretch without having the slightest inkling of the measure of the weight of what passed under the eye.
Either way, what even a casual acquaintence with The Qur'an impresses upon is that, underlying its words, is a subject-matter of grave consequence. In particular, this subject-matter holds within itself the answer to the question that mankind has always secretly sought and has periodically found but only to lose it again.
And that is the question of how ought a man conduct himself? The Qur'an, as it claims for itself, is the last revelation to mankind as a whole, being complete, coherent, clear, and concise. Repeated reading, even without fully understanding the meaning of a majority of what is contained within (it), strongly forges an intuitition that, indeed, there is truth to that claim.
It is an intuition which entices: to read, then re-read and then read some more. Soon, it is clear that The Qur'an is not a text: for a text makes its meaning clear after a certain period of repeated readings to a man with an average intelligence. Especially, if the subject-matter under consideration is universal, not novel and not reserved for a few. If a story, universal in its appeal, remains a mystery and its meaning an enigma, then the question arises: is it a lack of a matter of intellect or is the text in hand really a text?
It indeed is a crushing realisation, after having spent many an hours, to come to terms with: that is, to read – as it is commonly taught in childhood and carried through adulthood – The Qur'an is an intellectual folly. It is a clear evidence, if any was needed indeed, of the vanity contained within.
Following soon enough in the heels of this primal realisation dawns another, possessing an almost axiomatic quality, that The Qur'an chooses the time, manner and extent in which it makes its present felt in the heart of its 'reader'. In other words, The Qur'an reveals itself, provided it is engaged with as it is meant to be (engaged with).
alladheena aataynaahumu l-kitaaba
yatluunahu haqqa tilaawatihi
ulaaika yu'minuuna bihi
waman yakfur bihi
fa-ulaaika humu l-khaasiruuna
(Those to whom We have sent down the Writ,
(and who) recite it with the recital due to it,
believe in it truly;
but those who deny it,
then those, they are the losers)
~~ 2:121
While a treasure in itself, The Qur'an is no treasure to be chased by sheer dint of persistent mindless exertion. It will enforce painfully long pauses of pondering to catch breath before moving forward. A little reflection will make clear the reason: these pauses are what allow the heart draw itself close to what it has gained thus far and to prepare itself to proceed further. In other words, the extent of the understanding of The Qur'an's meaning has a distinctive and proportional relationship to the heart's sincerity, an allusion made often at critical intervals in it.
Inching towards this realisation implies that seeing The Qur'an only as a revelation given to one individual at a point in space and time, is to impose upon it a feature that is only visible by its absence. Instead, it is a living revelation, whose mine of meaning is plausibly accessible to those who, even today, wish to relate to it with the care it deserves.
But though the revelation may be alive at any point in time, its meaning, however, is locked for eternity, being unmalleable and unfungible. An informed relationship with The Qur'an scarce provides a license to freely interpret it in a personalised and subjectivistic fashion. This caution bears especial constant carriage in an era where Truth has been replaced with 'my truth'. The Qur'an, as may be safely postulated, does not conform to this modern mind-set: within its ayats lies coded an unyielding, uncompromising, and an unchanging meaning.
The breathtaking and the unnerving consistency of the tone of The Qur'anic voice stands to testify to this claim. This consistency suffices to insert the intuition that what is said is that which is exceptionally grave and permanent across space and time, and therefore, outside of the remit of man's Will to to mess around with it.
It, however, is not outside the remit of the ability of man to understand it. Rest assured, its subject-matter unfolds its true value, import and signification at intervals, much as the apparent mysteries of the nature do to the physicist. Being able to recite Einstein's proof of theory of relativity does not make for a quantum physicist; understanding the beauty behind it and its true value alone does.
To presume that it is possible indeed to grasp the entirety of The Qur'an after reading the whole of it several times is to miss the very point of why to engage with The Qur'an in the first place. For, The Qur'an ties itself closely with the events that surround its reader and listener. In other words, it is a constant witness to the events that unfold around an individual or a group.
This should not be a surprise for a logical reason: anything that is direct yet deep, abstract and general cannot be understood without reference to something specific. In the case of The Qur'an that specificity is supplied by the lived experiences of individuals themselves. Some of its words, turns of phrases, examples contained, concepts introduced, precepts outlined, subjects spoken of such as money or marriage, are simply beyond the ken of those who have not the actual experience against which they can be made sense of.
This (lack of experiential evidence from lived reality) is the reason that an act of reading The Qur'an forces the mind to rebel against the intellect — for it has caught the intellect red-handed, vainly discoursing to itself without reference to any body of actual evidence drawn from experience against which to measure or relate an ayat or a group of ayats.
O you who heed warning: ask not about things which,
if made clear to you, would distress you; but if you ask about
them while the Qur'an is being sent down, they will be made
clear to you. God has pardoned that; and God is forgiving
and clement.
~~ 5:101, The Qur'an
Emphatically then,, The Qur'an is not a corpus for ideal speculation. Instead, what The Qur'an tests foremost of its reader is that thing called authenticity. It is a quality which remains hard to muster in everyday affairs; but, when it comes to The Qur'an, it is an inescapable pre-requisite – what a man of science would call a necessary condition.
For, authenticity is a catalyst for sincerity, and if The Qur'an responds in proportion to the sincerity of the heart, then authenticity holds high authority. A heart which knows not how to be true to itself can scarce hope to remove the ills it contains. For, what else is the purpose of The Qur'an but a remedy for the ailing and a succour for the willing?
And The Qur'an is precise enough to actually define the level of authenticity it demands: it states, unequivocally that it is the guidance for the muttaqeen, whose root meaning literally means a man whose self is attached to his own conscience, or in other words, a man who is heedful.
For, it is well nigh impossible for a heedless soul to 'read a text' full of words and phrases such as 'without doubt', 'certain', 'clear', and oaths that call to witness all manner of objective facts so that man (may) be warned. This warning to man exists so that man may set bounds to his actions. Possession of heedfulness forces the heart to halt for several fearful beats upon encountering this phraseology; inauthenticity will cause it to skip over to the next convenient ayat.
In summary, then, a sustained engagement with The Qur'an begins with an acceptance that it truly is a revelation, not just to the person of Muhammad, but to each of its heedful listener and reader. As life progresses, more and more layers of its ayats become clearer, i.e., they make their meaning manifest in inescapably sharper terms.
This meaning made of life's experience through the prism of The Qur'an itself to correct and further oneself puts into context what its first axiomatic ayat ayats advertise it to be: a Writ that is free of doubt and involution and that which is a guidance for the heedful . The verb guidance hardly connotes a passive and static mindset but one which is very much involved in persistent and directed engagement.
Today, much of the vocabulary associated with the act of living based on a singular deep conviction. But the result of acquiring a a directed and engaged mindset is to build large reserves of conviction to engage with the reality that surrounds in a materially different manner. Given lack of common-place role-models or lack of immersion with past traditions of living with convictions that centre on objective truths, what are the mechanics of reading The Qur'an so as to acquire and retain a mindset imprinted with such conviction?
The order of the guidance
Those with even a passing acquaintence of The Qur'an cannot but notice one thing: the form traced by the arc of the average length of its Surahs, a collection of ayats as demarcated by tradition.
The Qur'an emerges, as if, from a singularity of The Fatihah, stretches the scope of its subject to fully cover the immediate line-of-sight of its reader through its second and longest Surah, and then, ever so gradually, withdraws over succeeding Surahs covering 5,104 ayats till its half-way mark of the 57th Surah (out of 114 total). It then accelerates the rate of compression with the remaining half of The Qur'an contributed but 1,132 ayats in all of its other 57 Surahs.
For instance, the last two Surahs, with hardly eleven ayats between them to boast of, akin to two successive puncutation marks in an essay, nonetheless express the final submission of the sincere and authentic reader who has been duly chastened at the feet of The Qur'an:
1. Say: "I SEEK refuge in the Lord of rising day
2. From the evil of what He created,
3. And from the evil of evening darkness
when it overspreads,
4. From the evil of the blowers in the knots,
5. From the evil of an envier when he envies.
~~ 113:1-5
1. Say: "I SEEK refuge in the Lord of mankind,
2. The Sovereign of mankind,
3. The God of mankind,
4. From the evil of the whisperer,
the one who withdraws,
5. The one who whispers
in (the) breasts (of) mankind,
6. From (amongst) the jinns and men.
~~ 114:1-6
Is this order of placement of the Surahs a coincidence or simply a result of human compilation wherein longer pieces are all staked together first, followed by agglomeration of other miscellany of pieces? Several answers are offered: such as that the longer Surahs were revealed in the place of Medina, the rest in that of Mecca. Or, that the longer ones reference things largely immediate, concrete, and relatable to an average person, while the shorter ones relate largely to description of 'Day of Judgement' (yawm al-din) in terms abstract, succint, and deep.
These explanations are unsatisfactory for two reasons: firstly, they demand access to information not directly within The Qur'an itself; and secondly, they explain some aspects of these Surahs, but not all of them, and hence remain partial. Several aspects of The Qur'an are not exclusive to one set of Surahs over others: many attributes and layers that make up the core message are spread across.
If, as the The Qur'an claims, it indeed is a guidance to the heedful, then it is but natural for heedfulness to demand that something as basic as the order of placement of Surahs has a purpose that is derived from the purpose of The Qur'an itself. (In general, it is not unreasonable to take the position that this statement applies to all other features of The Qur'an.)
This Qur'an guides to what is most upright, and brings glad
tidings to the believers who do righteous deeds, that they
have a great reward,
And those who believe not in the Hereafter: — We
have prepared for them a painful punishment.
~~ 17:9-10, The Qur'an
Now, if through this stated purpose, The Qur'an intends to help a man make meaning of his life and move him in a definite and pre-determined direction, then the order of the placement of the Surahs has to be such as to be the most optimal to help man make that journey without a glitch as he strives to move through the ayats one by one: any other (order) can only serve to dilute the efficacy of The Qur'an.
Whoso desires this fleeting life, We hasten for him therein
what We will to whom We wish; then have We appointed for
him Gehenna wherein he will burn, condemned and banished.
And whoso desires the Hereafter and strives for it as he
should, and is a believer — those, their striving is
appreciated.
To each do We extend — to these and to those — from the
gift of thy Lord; and the gift of thy Lord is not restricted.
~~ 17:18-20, The Qur'an
Now, given such a purpose, is the order of the Surahs the perfect order, or is it 'just right' to serve the purpose? If it is granted that The Qur'an deals with a matter of the gravest importance to entirety of mankind, there not being a single soul to which the message does not apply, then it must also be granted that The Qur'an will not settle for nought but perfection.
And when our ayats are recited to them as clear
signs, those who look not for the meeting with Us say: "Bring
thou a Qur'an other than this; or change thou it." Say thou:
"It is not for me to change it of my own accord. I follow only
what is revealed to me. I fear, if I should disobey my Lord, the
punishment of a tremendous day."
~~ 10:15, The Qur'an
Therefore, an inquiry into the order of The Qur'an may be framed thus: given an ordered arrangement of a series of ayats into Surahs, and that if such arrangement be deemed perfect, what is the logic that governs this arrangement?
Co-location, positional significance, and self-referentiality
To demonstrate the inviolability of the order of 6,244 ayats in one proof seems at the outset an impossible task. It may be more prudent, for the average intellect, to approach this question in stages, starting perhaps by inverting the question itself. Instead of trying to find the proof of perfection, is it possible to find the proof that this order of Surahs is certainly not a random compilation? For once randomness is eliminated, the field is then cleared of much speculations and misgivings that sow doubt and confusion.
Expectedly, there is no need to look beyond The Qur'an for a confirmation on this, introducing a general principle that if probed deeply The Qur'an contains safety-locks to safeguard itself from being tampered with. For,
We have made manifest the remembrance, and We are its guardians
~~ 15:9, The Qur'an
To the question: are the Surahs of The Qur'an a matter of random, ad-hoc compilation instead of a purposeful order: perhaps the first evidence to consider is the following ayat from the 74th Surah.
And not We have made the Guardians of the Fire except angels.
And We made their number only as a means of denial for those
who ignore warning, that those given the Writ might
be certain, and those who heed warning might increase in
faith, and those given the Writ and the believers might
not doubt, and that those in whose hearts is disease and the
false claimers of guidance might say: "What means God by
this similitude?" Thus God sends astray whom He wills, and
guides whom He wills; and there knows the forces of thy Lord
only He. And this is only a reminder to mortal man.
~~ 74:31, The Quran
The ayats of the 74th Surah preceding this one introduce a kind of individual, who having enjoyed wordly success in plenty, who harbours deep suspicision of The Quran, thinking, in particular, it is but the speech of a mortal (more specifically, enmeshed and bound by the chains of mortal pleasures) man. Notably, he refuses to also make the necessary effort to engage with what is front of him to confirm whether his suspicion has a basis in evidence. The above ayat, as will be shown, dispels that myth and ends by reminding the sceptic that indeed it is he who is mortal, and that The Qur'an is free of that attribute.
To this The Qur'an records God's response as follows:
I will burn him in Saqar.
And what will convey to thee what Saqar is?
It spares not and leaves not,
Scorching mortal man.
Over it are nineteen;
~~ 74:26-30, The Qur'an
The word ninteen in the 30th ayat certainly seems out of context: what has nineteen got to do with the scorching of mortal man? In particular, what is it that is nineteen over Saqar? (Such questions of some ayats being out of place are not uncommon when reading The Qur'an, and a general rule of thumb is when something seems out of place, it is best to presume that it is deliberately inserted as a protective measure as will perhaps be evident next.)
The context for 'nineteen' is actually provided by the 31st ayat which speaks of the number of 'Guardians of the Fire' which is a translation of the Arabic phrase ashaaba l-naari. Clearly, then, the nineteen refers to the number of ashaaba l-naari. This phrase occurs precisely 19 times in The Qur'an before it 20th and last mention in this particular Surah.
The Qur'anic guidance, then, is not a straight-jacketed formulation: it can scarce be debated that it has a definite linearity to begin with. The precise countour of this curvature may be open to speculation but its existence cannot be. More generally, and by implication, what is not open open for debate is that the order of arrangement of the Surahs, the ayats within a Surah, and the word order within an ayat are also fixed. There is no room for liberty to imagine a different order to this arrangement.
What is also clear is that despite the diminutive length of the final few Surahs, the meaning embodied in them is as profound, and perhaps, more so, than in the longest of the Surahs. It is, as if, The Qur'an, is setting the stage through The Fatihah, explaining things slowly and in pain-staking detail through some of the subsequent Surahs, and then compressing its lessons more and more tersely as it moves through its later Surahs.
Indeed, this is how something of great significance is taught: slowly and detailed at first, and then succintly and tersely later as the student's own skill of understanding increases, with the subject-matter starts acquiring greater clarity in the student's mind. It is, as if, the meaning is wound up more and more tightly through the length of The Qur'an.
This embodying of meaning in ever and ever finer and refined form, is akin to storage of large amounts of potential energy in a tiny object which may then be unleashed into kinetic energy by a simple chemical process. For instance, the potential energy which lies stored inside the nucleus a molecule is tapped into through a process of endless iterations and repetitions to generate nuclear energy.
Indeed, the repetitions of certain idiomatic phrases, themes, stories and references to observable phenomena is akin to igniting the kernel of The Qur'an's meaning inside the mind. Indeed, it can be argued that why were over 6,236 ayats needed when what The Qur'an intends to convey is said quite briefly and effectively in its first seven ayats?
Clearly, the extent of the potential energy stored inside The Fatihah is of such an order, that it needs this iterative and repetitive clarificatory process for the mind to come to terms with it, and for the actions of man to align fully with it. If so, the next question then is that how to tap into this potential energy?
Would reading it line by line, carefully unpacking each word of each line and expounding it into ever greater philosophical propositions serve the purpose to guide the heart? Or, is it about delving into the depths of its words, the order of their arrangement, their recurrence and repetition, their positional significance and how they string together to form larger and larger units of The Qur'an?
Perhaps a reframing of the question might strike a deeper chord. The Qur'an, if anything, is an emblem and exemplar of integrity. The question may then be rephrased thusly: what does it really mean to read an emblem of integrity?
A sense of this type of reading starts, perhaps, with recollecting the fact that The Qur'an was revealed as a spoken word. And a spoken word is listened to and not read. The challenge then lies in understanding in how is it possible to listen to a written word on whose shoulders rests the duty of carrying this emblem of integrity?
The intuition behind integrity is pithily presented by the dictum 'a whole is greater than the sum of its parts'. And in the particular context of The Qur'an, it is a whole that cannot be changed. Or, arguably, as the single-most important statement in The Qur'an states it bluntly 'Dhaalika l-kitaabu laa rayba fihi (2:22)' -> 'That is a Writ free of doubt and involution.'
We may therefore further refine our framing of the question to: how to listen to a Writ free of doubt and involution? Expanding upon it thus, we may further restate it as: how to read an order of words wherein the totality of meaning is more than sum of the meaning of its individual components, as well as the fact that the word order is fixed with no room for re-arrangement of any kind?
Attributing integrity to The Qur'an clearly implies cultivating a high degree of sensitivity to its internal order and architecture. And the only to cultivate this sensitivity (to listen to a written word without violating the constraint of integrity) is to read each word slowly but not too slowly.
Restricted not just to each word, the process slowly expands to draw within its fold each turn of phrase and each idiomatic expression. It then moves upwards to an ayat, to blocks of ayats, then each Surah and then a group of them. It is not impossible to imagine that if this process is carried long enough and far enough, The Qur'an as a whole starts to gradually reveal its inner meaning and mechanics.
What, after all, does a slow (but not too slow) reading of a written recitation really do? It converts it back into a recitation. It seems such an obvious tautological argument to make that, it is an insult to the intellect to be told the same thing but in an opposite word order; but there is no plainer way to say it. Left once more with the recitation, there is only one thing the mind can really do: listen in. We then are forced to ask again: what really happens when the mind listens in?
Recitation
In an era where the ink never run dry and papers are a plenty, the idea of exercising the ear is quaint, to say the least. For, when a musician can read a piece of music, why bother training the ear to pick up modulation of the pitch, changes in rhythm, nuances of chord-progression, the difference between major and minor chords?
STOP: The following paragraphs are to be subsumed in the content evolving above.
It bears reminding that The Qur'an was revealed as a spoken word: it was a speech first heard and then rememberd. Integrity in spoken word is excruciatingly difficult to achieve and comprises of unmistakable mastery of rhetoric — rhythm; calculated pauses; precisely spaced repetition; an interplay of brevity and elongation; subtle shifts in voice and mood; sudden stops and starts; careful pairing of words or phrases; switching between abstraction and specificity; time shifts (achieved through shifting tenses of verbs) and flawless continuity.
The study The Qur'an's rhetoric is an age-old preoccupation and is even formalised as field of study called balaagha (which stands for rhetoric in Arabic). While aesthetically mesmerising, the study of rhetoric has another purpose for those who wish to use The Qur'an for what it was meant to answer: how should a man behave?
Indeed, even a passing familiarity with The Qur'an's rhetoric does much to change the way to engage with it. That is so because underlying the rhetoric of The Qur'an is to imbue the speech with a special faculty: it is as if the speech is aware of the state of the listener's mind, so that it can envelope itself around it as it is unravelling itself.
The question then arises what really is the speech or the text whose rhetoric matters so much? While it has been labelled a scripture, is it some narration, or is it a very long poetry, or is it just a collection of thoughtful considerations, or is it just a admixture of all of the above? The answer to this lies buried in an understanding of The Fatihah which opens The Qur'an and the first six ayats immediately following it from the second Surah. Their word-by-word scrutiny indicates that The Qur'an, as a whole, is a formal, binding and consequential agreement which man, after careful consideration, is voluntarily accepting and entering into with God.
Like all agreements it is, first and foremost, laid-out as any legal instrument might be: consisting of a preamble; definitions; context which establishes mutuality of intention; detailing of offer and consideration; obligations that the acceptor must discharge to avail the consideration; and consequences of either abiding or failing to conform after acceptance, or rejecting the offer altogether. Further, repetitive reading (of The Qur'an) leaves an imprint that other stylistic elements of an agreement are also woven in, including recitals and codicils.
But it is a legal instrument with a distinction: it is the only legal instrument pronounced in a manner so literary that it is easy to remember – provided one puts in the hours (to remember). Furthermore, it teaches its listener how to interpret it without any confusion by free-wheeling aid of a feature accessible to any legal instrument: that of recursing the document repeatedly till it all starts 'coming together'.
Thus, its often unnoticed, untalked of but a foundational feature — that of availing of a legal form expressed in a highly literary style and making itself amenable to extensive recursion — helps The Qur'an seamlessly and subtly compact many required roles into one. It combines the tone of the law-giver, the law-adjuticator and the law-teacher. This fact is easy to bypass unless appreciation of The Qur'anic rhetoric – its manner of speaking – grips the heart. A heart heedless to this fact risks missing the existential message held within the bounds of The Qur'an.
Now, as a teacher, The Qur'an is not on a podium with a microphone, a blackboard and a stick in its hand; nor does it make an assumption that someone must listen to it because it has been crowned by its admirers with the hallow of the sacred. Instead, it opens a direct dialogue with its listener from its very first syllable and carries it through the last, encouraging the listener to likewise engage with with it with all of his mind.
All along, it posists facts, asks questions, provides reasoned answers, illustrates with examples, provokes with polemic and persuasion, and most importantly, keeps warning to refrain deviating from the straight path. It invites constant consideration and never once does it enforce itself. Its majesty lies in the fact that a careful student cannot but be convinced of the kernel of Truth in his Teacher's voice.
As a consequential (binding) legal instrument applicable to mankind in entirety, The Qur'an is speaking of and to several archetypes of audiences all at once — for those who understand, it is a reminder and a guide; and for those who do not, of which there are many kinds, it is a final warning.
It also speaks of the people of the past, the present and the future; and while speaking of them, it is also speaking to them, as if the dialogues (with them) were unfolding in real-time today. What it says can be applied at the level of an individual, a small group such as a family and larger groups such as nation-states. The topics it holds within its hands, therefore, range from the mundane to the political. A man-of-family as well as his political masters, both may find their confusion clarified from the same well.
Not only that, a psychologist may read it as a text on pyschology; the physicist as a stylised exposition of the law of cause-and-effect; a poet may find much fodder for his poetic imagination; or a political thinker may find much validation for what he sees today. That is, The Qur'an is plastic enough to fit-in-the-fold of its listener. In allowing for this, The Qur'an makes possible a sustained engagement of an inquiring mind with it. But what is an initial accomodation should not be construed as a acceptance: eventually, the listern has to strive to come out of the fold he is used to and inch closer to The Qur'an's own.
A speech which compacts so much (and more) can ill-afford even a minor misstep, and therefore, integrity cannot but be its acid-test. For any kind of translation – however earnest and excellent an effort it be – it will never be able to bring alive fully The Qur'an's rhetorical resonance which allows it to serve this wide an audience. Without a grasp of this rhetoric, it is difficult to be convinced of its integrity and unless conviction in its integrity is rooted, the chance of following its message remain poor. To come close to this rhetoric then, turning to the Classical Arabic of The Qur'an is but a necessity for a conscientious heart.
But in a world laid awash with English it is not easy to come to terms with Arabic. Its syntax appears awkward at first go — especially the morphology of the Arabic words which completely changes the form of a word to evade all forms of easy pattern-matching by the eye. English, which is stripped bare of all such morphological mannerisms, has bred laziness in learning languages. A speech fundamentally geared to rewire hearts will never quite fully be captured in modern-day English: the language of world-wide commerce is, sadly, no match for the commerce that transpires inside the deepest recesses of man's heart.
Laying aside the initial challenge posed by the Arabic grammar, a more fruitful way to begin the journey to learn The Qur'an is to befriend the smallest meaningful tokens that make any speech: its verbs and nouns. Here, Arabic is a blessing in disguise, for its smallest units – verbs and nouns – are comprised of combinations of root-letters (pre-dominantly Arabic consonants). As this ready-reckoner demonstrates, using these root-letters it is possible to understand the core-sense underlying their meanings in a bottom-up methodical manner, albeit, with some persistent practice.
Where there is a method, there is a pathway, and where there is a pathway, there is space to allow for accumulation of know-how: gradually at first, and then surprisingly at an accelerated pace (non-linearly) as practice progresses. The meaning behind this statement shall, hopefully, become clear as the reader iterates (recurses) through this page and later through The Qur'an itself.
Recursion and Rhetoric
The method alluded to above is nought but trying to find an equivalent English translation of the Arabic word or phrase that best fits the context of The Qur'an. The method has three simple steps: using the root-letters, find the core-sense of the particular noun or verb in question; map this core-sense to the context of The Qur'an to arrive at a suitable English phrase; and finally, test this phrase against all the occurences of the particular term (in form of different parts of speech) across all the locations within The Qur'an. If the meaning holds then use that meaning, else use the lessons gained from the recursion in the third step to revise the meaning and recurse again.
It is much like solving an algebraic equation: but unlike solving a mathematical equation, something else happens during this process. And it is that while recursing The Qur'an, the heart and the mind too get a chance to recurse through themselves. Many closely held notions start dissipating or crumbling: for making-meaning of things lights up hitherto forgotten corners of the brain. Indeed, much of the magic happens on account of the fact that words do have a root meaning, i.e., a core-sense. As examples of numerous words below will make it plain that any serious contact with root meanings of its own is enough to unshackle and liberate the mind from the conventions which have trapped and misled it for so long.
There is often a confusion that why do scriptures have so much repetition when what they want to say can always be captured succintly without it. The intent behind repetition should, hopefully, now be clear: it is the repetition of words, and through words the root senses, which allows for an engaged mind to rid itself of its habitual acquisitions of meanings other than the root one, and in the process purify itself. The repetitive realm is actually a field of practice for the mind: it is akin to giving students a daily mock-exam so that all their faculties are fully sharpened to meet the real world tests.
Consider the case of the words formed from the three letters (qaf; waw; mim) in that order. As per the The Qur'an Arabic Corpus, this triliteral root pattern recurs across 660 occurrences in 22 derived forms found as different types of nouns, verbs, adjective, and participles. Given that The Qur'an has roughly 6,600 ayats, the listener and the reader will encounter, on average, one or more form of this root in one out of ten ayats. Put another way, words derived from this root find their way in ten-percent of the locations in The Qur'an.
Imagine recursing through all of these occurrences, many of which are likely to be the same or similar. The fact that they are to be found across the length and breadth of The Qur'an and placed at certain points, however informs informs much about how The Qur'an intends the meaning of the words derived from this triliteral root-pattern to be.
Indeed, this is the way The Qur'an safeguards the root meanings of its own vocabulary from being corrupted. Repetition in The Qur'an is a short-hand for introducing a deliberate redundancy in its system of speech to safeguard its own speech. The fact that the speech is highly eloquent and posseses an enviable literary flourish makes this repetition to be remembered with ease.
Repetition does not mean that The Qur'an is bloated. In fact, The Qur'an is highly economical in its use of words, else it would not be possible to remember it with any degree of comfort. Its own core vocabulary is surprisingly small: its genius is like that of a musician who can take a small sub-set of musical "notes" and weave them into a highly sophisticated composition which, at the same time is pleasant to the ear.
Clearly, then each of the "notes" used in The Qur'an deserve careful attention: missing the nuance in their meanings may result in not being able to appreciate the "music". The third-step of recursing through multiple instances of a single root-system of letters to fully soak the mind in the intended nuance. Perhaps the best example of why it is important to capture the nuance is highlighted by another triliteral root-pattern, namely, (sad;lam;waw). This triliteral root-pattern occurs 99 times as verb, noun and participle.
Its noun form, salat, is one of the most difficult terms to make meaning of in The Qur'an. The reason being that the root-meaning derived from the first step of the above-mentioned procedure actually opens up a host of possibilities and poses a very difficult question of which of these possibilities actually make sense in context of The Qur'an?
The core-sense, or the root meaning of salat, literally means to attach or fix to something for constancy. In other words, the idea of being attached (to something) helps gain constancy. In English this can be interpreted to mean any one of adherence, allegiance, steadfastness, etc.. These meanings also make sense in the overarching context of The Qur'an: a legally binding voluntary and consequential agreement which man enters into with God. But the trouble is that using any one of them fails to fit all the instances of the use of either the term salat or its verb form salla.
For a mind seeking aesthetic elegance, which is inherent to any speech of impeccable integrity, it creates dissonances. For instance, use of adherence sounds too harsh in all contexts while the use of allegiance sounds a little too formal to fit all the cases. Meanwhile, steadfastness while getting across the meaning beautifully, lacks a sense of firmness and clarity which this triliteral root-pattern expects in the contexts in which it is used. What then is the way to resolve such doubts?
To answer such questions is to recognise that recursion in The Qur'an is not just recursion across the actual speech (or text) of The Qur'an alone: the recursion has to be careful at the level at which the recursion is being applied. Again a musical analogy may help: it is not important that a musical composition be played well, it is important at what pitch, tuning and key is it being played. Playing the right notes at the wrong key is like butchering the composition itself.
Something similar can also happen with The Qur'an for it is a text of gravity, profundity and consequences. At its deepest level, there is no doubt that The Qur'an may be interpreted in the most mystical of manners. At the other extreme, the meanings of the terms used in The Qur'an can be made so specific so as to correlate one on one with our lived daily experiences. However, the key of The Qur'an lies at neither of these extremes of absolute abstraction nor of specificity.
For instance, in the case of the term salat a mystical rendering will make the case for salat as devotion while specificity leads to its common use as prayer. Now it can also be argued that prayer and devotion themselves are joined at the hip: prayer is simply a form of expressing devotion. But, unfortunately, recursing The Qur'an with either devotion or prayer fails again to fit all the contexts with elegance. There are instances of usage where either of these terms seem like awkward intruders.
This is where the idea of context of The Qur'an holds fort: it is what determines the specific nuance that is acceptable. Now, what does it mean to say that The Qur'an is actually a binding agreement? Any agreement is actually concerned with defining a framework of action: how the parties concerned are expected to act and behave.
If we take integrity and universality as two undisputed features of The Qur'an then it stands to reason that in the eyes of The Qur'an the framework of action is one that has to be applicable to the entirety of mankind at any point in time. In that sense The Qur'an certainly speaks of things general and indeed even abstract and moves away from specificity. But how far will it go down the route of abstraction?
It can be argued that it will only go down that route to the extent it aids man to act and no more. It does not intend to be so abstract that no one can comprehend its import, or it will indeed require a mystical mind to actually act upon it. It has to stop its abstraction at the point from where individuals can apply the framework of action it contains in their own contexts. The Qur'an then is actually an agreement that clearly lays out a framework-of-action expressed in generic but practical terms.
This implies that the meanings of key terms in The Qur'an have to fit in a legalistic, general and action-oriented sense. It is this sense which has to be sought in translations as best as can be. The follow-up question of course is that what comprises of a legalistic, general and action-oriented sense? Words that fit this sense are words that allude to intentions, desires, attitudes, behaviour-patterns and ways of thinking. Further, because The Qur'an is an agreement, they all have to converge inside the broader context of relationship.
Now, against this backdrop, the term which perhaps best expresses the noun salat is alignment. The notion of alignment correlates strongly with actual action of an individual, envelopes the idea of being in tune, in line or constant with reference to a fixed thing. Where adherence was too powerful, allegiance too formal, devotion too emotional, alignment strikes a middle between them all while being closely related to practise of daily life.
Thus, the true musical key of The Qur'an is that of opening up the abstract root-meaning of words and pulling them into the world of action at just the right level. The Teacher embedded in The Qur'an is the Teacher that takes difficult theory and explains in a manner which relates closely to the practice of ordinary individuals. This, in short, is the brilliance of The Qur'an: it is first and foremost a call to action, then a guide to action and only finally something to be reverred and worshipped.
By laying itself open for recursion, it is inviting anyone to test this for themselves. It demands no blind allegiance but a thoughtful and well-considered alignment with itself. Hopefully, this preface was sufficient to delve into the actual vocabulary that comprises The Qur'an.
Orthogonality
Concision
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