The Quran—The Miracle Given to the Prophet

and non-Arabs became commonplace. With the mixing of Aryan and Semitic civilizations, the Arabic language and culture faced a new crisis. The grandsons of the emperors and lords of Persia arose to resurrect the civilization of their forefathers. These events had a profound effect on the Arabic language. The state that it had reached by the time of the poet Mutanabbi (A.D. 915-965) is expressed in the following lines: The buildings of Iran excel all others in beauty. The season of spring excels over all other seasons. An Arab youth goes amongst them, His face, hands, tongue, a stranger in their midst. They say Solomon used to converse with the jinns but were he to visit the Iranians; he would need a translator.181 The Quran’s literary greatness alone kept Arabic from being permanently scarred by these upheavals. On the contrary, the language always returned to its Quranic base, like a ship which, after weathering temporary storms on the high seas, returns to the safety of its harbour. During the reign of the caliph Mutawakkil (A.H. 207-247), large numbers of ‘Ajamis—especially Iranians and Turks— entered Arab territory. Then, in 656, the Mongolian warrior Hulaku Khan sacked Baghdad. Later the Islamic empire received a further setback when, in 898, Andalusia fell to the Christians. The Fatimid dynasty, which had held sway in Egypt and Syria, did not last long either: in 923,