In this short lesson, Ismail Kamdar revises briefly through the main sciences related to understanding the Quran.
Ismail Kamdar – A Summary of the Sciences of the Quran
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hamdulillah wa salatu salam ala rasulillah. While he was happy, he will begin by treating luscher by Hannah Darla ask Allah to send these Peace and blessings upon the final prophet, Muhammad even Abdullah of Allahu alayhi wa sallam, and all those who follow his weight with righteousness until the end of time.
So, today, we are going to very briefly recap whatever we have covered this semester. In terms of aluminum Quran, the sciences of the Quran. Now it's a very dense topic covers a lot of terminology, a lot of different concepts. And I know it can be rather overwhelming and to try and revise through all of this in half an hour 45 minutes may seem difficult, but inshallah This will help. Right. So basically, what we're going to do today is I'm going to very briefly recap through all of the different sciences of the Quran that we covered this semester. And then I'm going to open the floor to q&a.
So I'm going to get started straightaway inshallah, because we have a lot of ground to cover to begin the term alumina Quran, sciences of the Quran refers to the various fields of study related to the Quran, these are all of the different sciences, that one needs to learn in order to interpret the Quran in order to make up see, right related to this term is the term pseudo Pepsi, the correct methodology of Pepsi, and that we will come to a bit later in today's revision. So, in this course, we looked at all of the different sciences related to the Quran, the different angles from which the Quran is studied, so that we can understand comprehensively how many different perspectives the
ultimate study the Quran from.
The first thing we looked at was the concept of ye revelation, which we said, linguistically means a quick and secret transfer of knowledge. But in the Sharia, it refers to Revelation that is given to the prophets. So when we speak about Ye, we are talking about the revelation that is given to the prophets. We say that the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he received revelation both directly and indirectly, directly through dreams, a Judah Mirage, and indirectly via the angel jubilo email. We also said that the wahi that the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam received came in three different forms, the Quran, the hadith of Cozzi and the Hadees, and devil,
right, so the Quran, the Hadith generations of love said, and the Heidi Heidi says, the narration of what the prophet said, all three forms fall under the category of what he now does some more technical details will go into about Hades and dubawi, which types count as revelation, which types don't, but that's not related to our topic of dual core and that will be covered in Hades instead. All
right, but what we are concerned with here is the primary form of Wahid which is the Quran. Okay, continuing From there, the second topic that we looked at is the miraculous nature of the Quran. So as Muslims, we believe that the Quran is the proof, it is the living vertical, that Islam is the true religion of Allah. And it is in vertical from a variety of different perspectives, in terms of its poet, poetic nature, its choice of words, its historical accuracy, they were points in the Quran, certain stories in the Quran, which every nation at that time had mistakes, but the Quran had the correct version of the people only like many centuries later.
Also in terms of his predictions about the future, like how,
at the point in time when the Persians had just defeated the Romans, Allah revealed in the Quran that in the near future, the Romans would defeat the Persians. Right? And that came through. Also the fact that there's no mistakes in the Quran. There's no contradictions in the Quran, by contradiction remains something unresolvable. Obviously, we know that the islamophobes they point out literally dozens of so called contradictions in the Quran. But all of those are things that can be explained and can be reconciled. It's just a matter of perspective. So these are different ways in which the Quran is a miracle. Now, there is one perspective, which I'm very skeptical about, and
that is the issue of science. I know in the 90s. In the early 2000s, there was this big deal about scientific miracles in the Quran. We'll come to this. Later in the year we will discuss why this approach is problematic and many of the mistakes people make in the field. Nonetheless, there are some verses in the Quran that we could say that the scientific accuracy makes them a miracle, but not as many as people think.
right a lot of the issues that people assume a scientific miracles in the Quran are often miss translations or misinterpretations to make it seem scientific. So inshallah we'll get to that later in the year. Okay, the next topic we covered was the compilation of the Quran. And we said the the compilation of the karate went to three primary phases. The first was the time of Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wasallam, in which the Quran was preserved in two ways. First, it was memorized by the Sahaba. Number two, they were a few scribes who wrote it down, but he did not compile it into a single volume, because revelation continued throughout the life of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi
wasallam until the very end, so we can say by the end of the life of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasallam. The Quran was preserved in the memories of the Sahaba as well as in scattered documents amongst the scribes. After the death of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam A few months later, the Battle of yamamah took place in which many of those who had memorized the Quran were martyred. So Omar regular who had the idea of compiling the Quran into a single volume, he proposed this idea to Alibaba abubaker, regular and who will hydrate even double rhodiola and who to read a a team to lead a team of scribes to compile the Quran into a single volume. And this became the original must
have, which was passed on to Omar and from Omar to have some the third stage at the time of smiling, he was the halifa as many new lens entered into Islam, people began to have differences of opinion in how the Quran should be recited. So he had the even savage lead another team of scribes to make copies of the moose half there was capital hafsa. And to distribute this throughout the land, and to make this the official version of the Quran and to make sure that wherever in the world people would have put it was copied from this original copy, and that the recitation was in accordance to one of the seven or 10 ways in which this was half could be recited. And so this became known as the cosmos
hub and that is what we have with us right until today and that is how the Quran was preserved. So the preservation of the Quran is a very important topic. Now, obviously, there's a lot more details that we can go into on that topic. This is just an intro duction
they are excellent books on the topic they go into a lot more details. The next topic very difficult topic, very difficult to understand perhaps at this point in your studies inshallah, as you grow in knowledge, this topic will become more clear, but for now, just to make it very brief, another perspective from which the Quran is studied is from the roof and the karats, the dialects and the recitations. So there is a hadith that says that the Quran was revealed in seven Afro and the other night have a variety of opinions of what is meant by
what seems to be most strongest is that the Quran was revealed according to seven different dialects of Arabic that existed in the in Arabia at that time, so that all of the Arabs could recite it easily, but it was preserved according to the Qureshi dialect. The Quran has reached us in 10, different styles of recitation, all of which have authentic change of narratives going back to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam. And you will find amongst these 10 different styles of recitation, different wordings, different meanings, but no contradictions. Now, in my view, this amplifies the miraculous nature of the Quran, that not only do we have a Quran, but we have 10
different ways of reciting it. Each of these 10 ways may have some variation in meaning in certain verses. But still, if you have to cross compare all 10 recitation of the Quran, you will not find a single irreconcilable contradiction, that's the vertical of the Quran.
Again, I'm going through this very briefly because this is simply for revision purposes. The next thing which we had to revise was the fasulo DEP CFD principles or methodology of Tafseer. Right.
And we said that before someone can become more fussy or make them feel they have certain conditions that they need to meet, right they need to master woolloomooloo karanvir sudo sudo Hadees fic Arabic HD heard there many different subjects they need to study before they become qualified to make your own tafsir. And we said that the verses of the Quran there are four types. The first type are those verses which anybody can understand and everybody must understand. So unless you have a hanger that says Paul, who Allahu Ahad say he's allowed the one and only everybody can understand that everybody must understand that everybody must learn that. The second level are those things which require a
understanding of classical Arabic to understand what Allah Subhana Allah is
Seeing. The third are those verses that require interpretation of Allah. So the books of Dempsey focus on these two categories of verses, the books of Tafseer tend to explain to us those verses, which require understanding of classical Arabic what those words meant at that time. And they also explained to us the meaning of verses from the perspective of the Lama.
And we said that the fourth type of verse in the Quran are those things which only Allah knows, you know, the shabby heart, right, and these are, will be left up to Allah and they're not explained at all. We said, the correct methodology of Tafseer is five steps, there are five things that you do when making tafsir in the correct method, number one is that you understand it in the Arabic in the original Arabic word with the classical meaning of the words. So you cannot make the FSI from a translation. And you have to go back to the Arabic original. Number two, you look at the other verses of the Quran on that same topic. Number three, you look at the Hadees. And the answer on that
topic. Number four, you look at the opinions of the Ummah, on that topic, right the past of six. And finally, if you've done all of this is fine facil can build upon that by his own opinions if they meet certain conditions. And from there, we get the two methodologies of Tafseer seen by induration, which simply means in reading other verses of the Quran, or Hadith, or ourselves of previous steps, here's what they said about that verse at the nearby opinion, which is where an alum gives his own opinion on what a verse means, right. And we said both methodologies are acceptable with conditions. We will cover that in more details later this year. The next science that is required for
understanding the Quran is, as above understood the reasons for revelation. So certain verses have a context, they will reveal on specific occasions and help us to understand the context and application of those verses better. And the only way to know the abarbanel rule is through the us out of the Sahaba generations of the Sahaba because they were the eyewitnesses. They were they when those verses were revealed today will say ours The only occasion when this happened, and the verse was revealed to the Prophet was them about it. So this becomes a suburban result, a reason for revelation.
What is helping us to do it to give us context to give us clarity to give us explanation, right, and we said two other points about about the zoo. And we won't go into get into details now because we covered this earlier in the year. Number one, if this seems to be a contradiction between two narrations on this topic, there is a five step process to follow to reconcile between these narrations, and every single time to eat a so called contradiction, one of these five steps opposite. The second thing we looked at is, we do not follow the modernist approach, which is that they overrule the general application of a verse using a sparkling noodle, meaning the modernist
will say, Oh, this verse was for Abu Bakar, it's not for us. This verse was for Isaiah, it's not for us. No, we say this verse was for Abu Bakar. And anybody will fall into the same situation in future this verse was for the wives of the Prophet SAW Islam and anybody who else would apply to and to into the future, right? It's not restricted to the person it was revealed for unless that is explicitly stated in the early books of Tafseer. Okay,
the next point that we looked at was the division of the Quran into Makkah and Medina. So we said that those verses that we reveal before the Hydra are classified as makan verses, and those verses and sutras revealed after the hijra are classified as Medina verses important point. Buchan and Medina is a division based on time, not place. It's divided according to when not were very important. Right? We said that you can make out in general, if a surah is makan or Medina by the content of that surah This is not always accurate, but 90% of the time it is. So in general, those students that focus on theology that focus on stories of the prophets, these tend to be makin. And
those students that focus on the laws of Islam on jihad, on addressing the Jews and Christians in Amman, Africa in these tend to be Medina. Right. That's the general no and they are exceptions both ways. But we said that the most reliable source to know if a verse was revealed in Makkah, in Makkah and Medina and era is the star of the Sahaba that if Abu Bakar Omer or more likely Ayesha Abdullah even Abbas
amin, if any of them had to say this pseudo was revealed in Makkah, or the pseudo was revealed in Medina, this becomes a stronger evidence. They're looking at the context. Okay. Okay, we have a
continuing with our revision, the next field
We looked at the next science of the Quran related to tafsir is naskh. abrogation very important concept, right? The verses in the Quran and Hadees that are abrogated. A scholar must be aware of which verse of the Quran in which Hades is abrogated, right? And the abrogation can occur in one of four ways. A verse of the Quran abrogating another verse of the Quran, a verse of the Quran abrogating Hadees Hadees abrogating a verse of the Quran and Hadees abrogating a Hadith, the only one amongst them which there is difference of opinion about is a Heidi's abrogating a verse of the Quran, there to the scholars, they have a difference of opinion on a very technical level. But the
conclusion ends up being the same, that a certain verse is abrogated. It's very important to know which verses the abrogated there is no room here for forming your own opinions and making it hard and thinking about it. This has to come from the narration, we have to have a narration from the prophets allow you to monitor his or her by saying that this verse was abrogated by that verse, or this hadith abrogated by that Hadees clear example that in terms of IDs, you might find leases with the prophets lie some do not allow people to visit the graveyard. We have another Hadith where the prophets of lies have stated, I used to stop you from visiting the graveyards. Now you may visit
them to remember that. So that is a clear abrogation of the previous prohibition.
In the Quran, there are three types of abrogation, sometimes both verses are still in the Quran, with one abrogating the other. Sometimes the previous verse is not in the Quran anymore. It has been removed completely. Right. And sometimes the verse is helping remove from the Quran, but the Lord remains in Islam. And this is very rare. I can only think of two such
or maybe one such case, right, which is the verse of stoning where Allah revealed a verse about stoning the adulterer. And then that he later removed that verse in the Quran, but the ruling remain part of Islam to Sunnah. And each Ma, right. So this is very important to be aware of these points. Otherwise, it can be very confusing if you find them in books by other people. Right? Now we come to the longest and the most difficult part of aluminum Quran and I'm going to go through this very briefly, we really don't have time to go into details, it will take a few hours to cover this in details. Hopefully you enjoy the modules earlier. But that's the language of the Quran. And like any
other
subject, every field has its own terminology. And so the Quran when you're doing Tafseer of ADR, certain terminology you use when you're discussing the Quran. So for example,
when we talk about the shift in grammar in the Quran, we call this artifact, right when we talk about verses that are general versus that specifically call this arm and horse, now our main horse plays a bigger role, you know sooner, right? So when you do sudo, we can cover that in more details, because it's very important for interpreting the Quran and Hadith in terms of fit to know which verses are general and which ones are specific in which one we need to base our ruling upon.
In terms of understanding whether a verse of the Quran is clear, or open to interpretation,
there are four types of wording that you will find in the Quran. The first is called pneus. pneus means that the word is clear and there's no room for a secondary interpretation. So when the Quran says qu Allahu Ahad, says Allah, the one and only the word ahead is very clear, it is not there's no room here, for different meanings. There's only one possible meaning right? Now, for those words, which have multiple meanings. There's two approaches to them depending on the context. One is closer here and the other is Cosmo one, though here means that one meaning is obvious. And we go with the obvious meaning based on context. More overall means that we don't go with the obvious meaning
because there is a clue that we should go with a secondary meaning. So that means it's interpreted an example of boat, right? An example of going with the law here is a law tells us in the Quran,
the general verses in the Quran wanting us not to commit vilem not to commit oppression. We take those verses on the resort here meaning not to not to commit oppression, right? But there is a certain verse into Iraq man.
We elect to have a handle that speaks about Zulu in more stronger terms as if it's a unforgivable, right. And in that verse, the proper circumcised year. Zulu means shot. Yeah, in this verse. oppression means worshiping someone besides Allah. So in that verse, that word zulum is more overt, it's interpreted using a secondary meaning, not the primary
meaning of the word, right? So there we have a Hadees to indicate that we're not going with the obvious meaning of the word we're taking a secondary meaning. Okay? The fourth time and this is where most of the differences of opinion come in is called mutual. This is a word which has multiple meanings, and it's not clear which meaning is intended. The most obvious example is the verse about the woman's in that period, which says it is three Kuru. Now, Kuru in Arabic means the periods of purification and the periods of menstruation. And so some Muslims went with one meaning and some multiplied with the other meaning because this word is much mouth, it has multiple meanings, and
different scholars interpreted in different ways and one knows best.
Another important set of words for understanding the Quran is more common with the Shabbat. So mocha means the verse is clear. muda shabby means the verse is unclear, unclear could be in one of three ways. Either it is muda shabby, because you haven't researched it of serious and once you researched it, I've seen it becomes clear, or is Buddha Chavez to the layman, but clear to the alum, right. or most of the time when we use it, when you use this word with a sharpie, we are referring to the third category which is only Allah knows what it means. So like the names and attributes of Allah, right, to a large extent them with the shabby, same with the descriptions of Paradise and how
are the birds or the soul all of these concepts that matter shall be only really only Allah knows the reality? We only know a little bit about them. The Hulu pharmapack What do you leave la miyachi? What do these letters mean only Allah knows okay. So these are categorized as what that shall be. The next division is into haqiqa and majaz, which means we take certain verses of the Quran literally, and we take other verses of the Quran. Metaphorically,
the norm is to take a verse literally, we only take a verse metaphorically when there is a reason to do so any indication that it's meant to be a metaphor. And we went into details about the different types of literal meanings.
In some cases, it's the linguistic meaning in some cases is the customer usage of the word. In some cases, the shery definition. All of these are different types of literal meanings. As far as metaphors we see there's two types of metaphors, either it's obvious it's a logical metaphor, it's obvious diversity is meant to be taken metaphorically, or it's a linguistic metaphor, meaning one needs some
familiarity with the Arabic language in order to understand how this is a metaphor.
Another important set of terms for understanding the Quran is the story of denial. The story is Allah explicitly discusses a topic he openly discusses a topic and denied a lot alludes to a topic. So in general, whenever Allah subhana wa speaks about a topic in the Quran, he discusses it's very straightforward. These are the rules of Salah This is rather This is Salah, Sokka, Hajj, jihad, it's all mentioned very clearly it's the three. But
when it comes to the issue, for example of sexual *, the Quran discusses the true Kenai. So Allah Subhana doesn't use exact word in the Quran, the Quran instead we'll see something like touch a woman, or spend the night with your wife. It's it's alluded to, it's not mentioned explicitly, so that the adults reading it catch up what's being said, and the children reading it, it goes over their head. It's a very beautiful way of wording, these type of topics. And another thing to be aware of, in terms of language of the Quran is the mobile hammer. So Muhammad means people are places that are not mentioned by name, people or places that are not mentioned by name.
So the best example is the story in a scene, which speaks about three prophets that were sent to a city and only one person in that city believed in them, that entire story is moved home. There's no names mentioned, we don't know which city we don't know which properties we don't know who the believers nothing, we just know the story. Why did Allah do this? So we focus on the lesson and not the details. That's the main reason there are other reasons we covered as well. But the main reason being focused on the lesson, not the details.
Another thing to understand about the language of the Quran is that sometimes the Quran goes against conventional grammatical norms in order to highlight an important issue or to mention something of respect. So for example, sometimes the predicate comes before the subject, which is the opposite of Arabic grammar rules because the predicate is more important to Allah subhanaw taala is highlighting it or this, you know, is trying to emphasize it. So this is often done for emphasis.
The final thing which we looked at in terms of sciences of the Quran are the different types of literature found in the Quran. So in general, when a human being writes a book, we stick to one genre in a book, right? So a book could be an analogy a book could be a
argument for a certain point of view or a book could be a story. The Quran is an amalgamation of all of this. So in the Quran, we have muscles, we have similes, metaphors, Proverbs parables, we have all of this. We have possums, we have different old drawing our attention to different points. We have general we have arguments for the oneness of Allah for the truth of Islam for the Prophet, Muhammad Sallallahu wasallam. All of these logical, simple arguments abound throughout the Quran. And we have cost us we have stories, the Quran has many stories split up throughout the Quran. So it's not fitting into one genre, like how human books are. It's a mixture of multiple genres of
literature in a way that only Allah subhanaw taala can do in which it has analogies, stories and arguments woven together in a very beautiful and poetic way in which it just flows.
So that's it, I'm done enough, we did it 30 minutes.
And we revise through all of the different sciences of the Quran very, very briefly. I hope you found this beneficial, and I'm going to open the floor to q&a night.
Any questions you have related to lumen Quran, or
any of the subjects that we covered in the first half the semester, you can ask your questions now.