The Quran—The Miracle Given to the Prophet

THE QURAN—THE MIRACLE GIVEN TO THE PROPHET (Qaaf) they pronounced as ‘j’, (je) calling a ‘tariq’ (road) a ‘tarij’, a ‘sadiq’ (friend) a ‘sadij’, ‘qadr’ (value) ‘jadr’ and ‘qasim’ (distributor) ‘jasim’. According to standard linguistic patterns, the coming together of tribes who spoke such varying dialects should have initiated a new process of change in Arabic, but this was not to be. The supreme eloquence of the language of the Quran guarded Arabic against any such transformation. What happened instead has been explained in the following words by Dr Ahmad Hasan Zayyat: After the coming of Islam, the Arabic language did not remain the monopoly of one nation. It became the language of all those who entered the faith.179 Then these Arab Muslims left their native land, conquering territory from Kashghar in the east to Gibraltar in the west. Persian, Qibti, Berber, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Aramaic and Suryani were among the languages spoken by the peoples they came into contact with. Some of these nations were politically and culturally more advanced than the Arabs. Iraq, the bastion of an ancient civilization and the cultural centre of major tribes, was one of the countries they entered. They mingled with the Iranians, masters of one of the world’s two great empires. The highly advanced Roman civilization and expanding Christian religion were two forces that clashed. Among the countries they occupied was Syria, where Phoenician, Ghassanid, Greek, Egyptian and Cana’anian tribes had left behind great traditions in literature and ethics. Then there was Egypt, the meeting