The Quran—The Miracle Given to the Prophet

THE QURAN—THE MIRACLE GIVEN TO THE PROPHET they were replaced by the Ottoman Turks in large stretches of Arab territory. The centre of the Islamic government moved from Cairo to Constantinople; the official language became Turkish instead of Arabic, which continued to assimilate many foreign words and phrases. The Arab world spent five hundred and fifty years under the banner of Ajami (non-Arab) kings. Persian, Turkish and Mughal rulers even attempted to erase all traces of the Arabic language. Arabic libraries were burnt, schools destroyed, and scholars of the language found themselves in disgrace. The Ottoman emperors launched an anti-Arabic campaign, fittingly called “Tatrik al-‘Arab” (Turkisation of Arabs), by the well-known reformer Jamaluddin Afghani (1838-97). But no effort was strong enough to inflict any permanent scar on the face of Arabic. Fierce attacks were launched on the Arabic language and literature by the Tartars in Bukhara and Baghdad, the Crusaders in Palestine and Syria, and other Europeans in Andalusia. According to the history of other languages, these assaults on Arab culture should have been sufficient to eradicate the Arabic language. One would have expected Arabic to have followed the path of different languages and merged with other Semitic tongues. Indeed, it would be accurate to say that if Arabic had not come up against Turkish ignorance and Persian prejudice, it would be spoken throughout the Muslim world today. Still, its very survival in the Arab world was due solely to the miraculous effect of the Quran. The greatness of the Quran compelled people to remain