Nouman Ali Khan – Recitations and Written Copies – Ep. 7 – The Quran Library
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Well, first of all, we have to consider
that they were not speaking Arabic. Yeah. I
know that shocks people sometimes.
Musa, alayhi, was not speaking Arabic.
No. Of course, he wasn't. Well, Faran was
too? Well, he was Egyptian. No. He wasn't
that kind of Egyptian yet.
We have something like Ar Rahmanu Alam Al
Quran.
So he says for example after Ar Rahman
he says you know, La which is like
don't stop here. Now that doesn't mean he
necessarily is telling you do not stop as
a Qari. He's just saying do not consider
it to be the complete
sentence. Woah. You just blew my mind.
Is intimately connected to the signs of tafsir.
Makes sense. Where you start and stop is
according to what you understand of the meaning.
Like like, my favorite one is the sign
that says slow children playing.
Right.
So so that's the bukflazim,
right? Yeah. If you continue here,
you spoil the meaning.
What are we doing today?
So today, inshallah, we're gonna talk about
masahef of the Quran.
We're gonna
talk about and Quran.
Okay. Well, mainly in terms of how we
interact with them in this sort of current
time, and later, inshAllah,
we'll look at some of the genre around
early masahif, the development of Quran,
that might need a separate episode. So in
terms of masahif, you know, in my personal
collection, I've got some
that are just, you know, general
reading, and I've got some here, some there.
But there are a few things that I
thought I'll show you.
These are just some personal copies of the
Quran, and then below that,
I've got something which
is kind of unusual,
this must have, which has
margins from the site.
Oh, for note taking? Yeah.
So it could be for all different types
of notes. You could be writing points of
tiffs here.
I use this particular copy because I've got
3 of them.
This one I used when I was doing
my
PhD research, and I was comparing different
tafsirs and what they cross reference to.
So in Surat An'am in particular, which is
where when the case study was,
I went through and wrote down, you know,
according to Istafsir that I was reading, which
other ayahs are they pointing to?
So I built up a kind of cross
reference.
So I don't think I'm intending to complete
the whole thing, but there you go. Is
there a bigger version of this?
Do they have that? Where'd you get this
from?
This I got in Egypt.
There's a bigger version of something else I'll
show you. One moment. I mean, I got
one in Pakistan like this, but that was
like line spacing.
So Aya, line space, Aya, line space, and
I'm just Shia. You get
a space that you can add
translation.
Right. Yeah, so I personally haven't seen that.
This is one that I got in. I
have one, but it's like 3 volumes. One
of them is 5 volumes. It's rather big.
Well, this is one where you literally have
to write everything yourself. Oh my goodness.
Oh my goodness.
And they limited the space to get fit
the ayah in. They made the space according
to, you know, specifically how it's laid out
in the standard copies that tend to be
available.
So you're supposed to follow the calligraphy and
follow the exact spacing.
So do it in pencil is basically what
they're saying. Yeah. Probably do it in pencil
and then, then go over it.
So
I got this recently in Mecca,
and I thought, yeah. I mean, it's
it's a big project, but it's it's a
beautiful project, a life project, and then also
something you can pass on to your children.
And, you know, so they they call it.
Yeah.
So,
yeah, in terms of the mussaf,
I don't have much to say about them.
You know, we've got different sizes and
and and formats and so on. A lot
of people have questions about, like, the South
Asian print, like, the Dutch company print of
the Musahev. This is the more Hasmani looking
Musahev. And then the Turkish have a slightly
different kind of,
typesetting font. You know? Yeah. Well,
I actually have
some other country,
Musahev, so
this one is a recent Qatari print, which
is,
which I really like the font of.
Yeah. This is really nice
typesetting. Yeah. I might get it's it's not
typesetting even. It's actually It's handwritten.
Yeah. As I understand, there was a competition,
and, you know, this is the winner of
the competition.
Oh, wow. Got their
writing of the must have to be the
official one printed by Qatar.
And this is one from Turkey.
I remember we saw the Turkish ones in
the Cambridge
Central Mosque. They had Yeah. A sort of
I like it. Branded with the Cambridge
Central Mosque logo, but it was, you know,
from the Turkish must have.
This one is is you know,
it might not seem special, but it's special
to me because it was gifted to me
by my 1st teacher,
who happens to be actually more famous probably
as an Nasheed singer.
And we were just discussing before how sometimes
people are both,
but, Sheikh Yahoah
was my teacher
20 years ago,
and that's when he gifted me that. Wow.
I've got a few mus haps that are
in different,
different,
Quranic readings.
So this one comes from Libya, I believe,
and it's in the reading of Qalun
and Nefer.
So, you know, there's some differences in how,
you know, not just the script style, but
also some of the, obviously, you know, the
way that words are written.
And Yeah.
And then there are Wow. That's that's different.
Reading. Yeah. So one of the things that
you get from the kind of Maghrebi prints,
I think this one is Moroccan,
is that,
you know, fa is written with a dot
below, and taaf is written with 1 dot
above. So the taaf looks like a fa,
which can be quite quite confusing
when you go. What reading is that, or
what's the This one is this was in
Rarsh,
and it is in a Maghrebi style
font.
So
but this is so,
so pretty. You can just literally,
you know, take a photo of any part,
and it would be just a work of
art. It's just so beautiful. Yeah.
Even this one, like, the way they connected
the fa to the la, right?
Yeah. The ula ika is like
Yeah. It's a very intricate sort of,
it looks like it's architectural
construction.
Yeah.
Martin?
So in terms of,
qira'at,
you know, I don't specialize in
in qira'at from the perspective of
reciting them and,
gathering them all together, but I take a
lot of interest in,
the differences in the readings and especially how
they affect meaning Yeah. Being a tafsir person.
So I do often need to compare,
you know, under a specific ayah which
tarah reads what. So these are a couple
of books that do that. This is quite
a sort of established one,
So it go Asharah. Sorry. So it, in
fact, goes through
the 10 canonical readings Mhmm. Or the 10
readings that are accepted by all scholarship as
being part of the Quran.
And then,
it has 4 additional ones, which are
considered to be supplements to that.
And this is something very cool. It comes
in 2 massive volumes.
So this is like a kind of special
teaching edition, which is which is designed for
recitations.
Right?
You can't really make sense of this without
having a teacher
who would guide you through it. Right. And
in fact, this is sort of you're supposed
to learn
traditionally how to recite the different readings, and
then this,
can just remind you so that you can
do a special way, which is called.
Alright. Yeah. I've heard that before. So that
means you in one sitting, you actually go
through the multiple readings one after the other
in a specific sequence, and there's specific ways
of doing it, which are accepted by the
scholars.
So this just you know, I just love
the fact that it exists. And,
I guess when I bought it, I thought
one day I might
find a teacher who's willing to,
let me recite from it,
even without
going through the all the process that, you
know, many people do,
of of memorizing all the and memorizing
the didactic poems
of the and the and
then for
the for the, you know,
the major ten readings.
But this is just it gives you a
sense of, you know, under every eye, you
can see the variations, and you can you
can explore
in a really nice way.
So in general from there, the next thing,
I suppose, is,
the jwid, you know, because, obviously,
reciting the Quran,
there are,
oh, actually, even before that.
This is pretty cool.
There's 2 special mussah. I have one is
called mussah al mutashabihat.
I've seen something like that before.
So what what it has is in the
margins, it's got any ayahs that are sort
of similar. Yeah. All the phrasings that are
similar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's especially for
someone who's trying to memorize and to make
sure that they know to contrast it Yeah.
With, oh, this one in the haraf, sounds
like that one in mbiah, for example.
Interesting to see implication too. Like, you'd you'd
see
structures and phrases that were used in different
places. Yeah. So I I talk about that
in my thesis about tafsir al Qur'an,
the relevance of what I call near parallels.
Parallels are near parallels, so where it's exactly
the same and where it is just slightly
different
because, you know, that that invites investigation.
Yeah.
In fact, there's a whole genre which we'll
which we'll talk about shortly,
and
this is.
What they've done here is they
have colored things according to topics.
So you've got a sense of the progression
of topics so that you can kinda make
a mental mind map as you're memorizing from
this book. It's the kind of idea and
a and a theory which might work, or
it might work for some people more than
others.
Mhmm. And then
they've also used colors to indicate things which
you kind of notice the resemblance of things
and the patterns of things so that you
so that you can be strong in memorizing
this page.
You know? So here,
so you see the connection between these things.
Right.
You know? So there's some patterns and connections.
Right.
All in the same page.
So this way, you can pay attention that,
okay, this is coming twice. And so I
think that's pretty cool.
And then generally in Tajweed,
these are, you know, a few of my
books in Tajweed. It's not everything, but these
are all things that are a little bit
special.
So this is a book that I was
gifted by someone who was teaching me,
in the Hosseini mosque. So, of course, Sheikh
al
Hosseini,
one of the absolute kings Grandmasters
of Yeah. Of
recitation in Egypt. Yep. And he has
a mosque that he used to be in
in in in India called Laguza,
And then there's a large mosque in 6th
October city in Cairo,
which was established by his daughter, Yasmin Hosiri.
So, anyway, the the person there was someone
there who took some time to teach me,
back in 2004
and then gifted me this. So, like, you
know, I just love these sort of, special
stories of a book even if it gets
a bit beaten up.
But,
there's that one.
I just realized
this the signature is by the author, and
then this is the one that was for
me. Oh, wow.
So
so the author had gifted it, I think,
to the mosque, and then they they gifted
it to me.
So it's a book on the rules of
Tajweed? Yeah. On the rules of Tajweed, a
sort of general book on that, and we've
got some others, like, I think this is
quite worthy of mention in English, Tajweed al
Quran,
because this also contains some quite handy
insights about phonetics
from a linguistics perspective, and so he uses
the right terms.
That's quite unusual.
There's a lot of books in Tajweed, of
course, a lot of excellent things. Right. This
is one by Sheikh Haman Swayed, who is,
you know, a top authority nowadays in Tajweed
and, Qur'aads as well.
And he's got this, illustrated book, which is
now also
translated. So
the articulation point of the letter, lamb, where
there's a lot of diagrams, and,
the rules are also kind of illustrated
in bullet points. So this is quite a
nice teaching tool as well.
But this one, is probably the most
detailed book of Tajweed that I have in
3 volumes. This is by my sheikh,
Nabil Ab
Nabil bin Abdul Habid, ibn Ali. Yeah? So
sheikh Nabil,
is based in Cairo.
He's a student of the
you know, he he passed away, Sheikh Abdul
Hakim Abdul Akif, who was sheikh Al Qurra
of,
of Egypt.
And this book is is particularly detailed in
3 volumes.
And what's special about this
copy is that it has my ijazah here
from the author.
I didn't read to him the full Quran,
but I what I read to him from
memory is what he gave me Ijazen, which
was from the beginning of the Quran to
the end of, surat Ali Imran.
So that was a very
fun experience. I can tell you about another
time,
but that was a very intense kind of,
intense kind of study that I did with
him.
And then this is generally about the Quran.
This is.
So to learn to recite in all the
different ways and the valid
transmissions of the Quran,
you know, you need to obviously study with
the teacher, and these books can help,
just to lay out, you know, each of
the
7 and then 10 canonical readers,
what are the, you know,
specific ways that they handled certain questions, like
how did they recite hamza when it comes
in this situation, or what did they do
with these letters,
what did they do with different types of
mud and lengthening, and so on. So this
is the book of Usul Al Qaraat,
which was recommended to me.
And related to, we have got.
So it's very important
to,
to see where sentences,
you know, start and end in the Quran.
Right. As you know, every ayah
is not necessarily a sentence. Correct. It could
be several sentences.
Sometimes sentences. You get very short ayah, which
is part of a sentence, or just the
end of it begins a sentence which can
continue into the next ayah. Yeah.
So that's why, you know, when it comes
to translating, you're gonna start to reconstruct it
as, you know, capital letter and full stop.
In Arabic, we don't have capital letters.
We can have full stops, but, it's kind
of an unnatural The punctuation We don't have
the English language is not
it doesn't synchronize with the punctuation of the
Quran.
The structure of the ayah cannot be
corresponding to
language structures that we're used to outside. In
fact,
one of the things that I thought about
when I was writing divine speech or or
teaching divine speech was that the ayah,
we translate it either as verse,
which has either poetic,
implications or it has biblical connotations. Right?
So it's either
so the word verse doesn't quite fit what
the Quran is doing,
and it
and to me, it almost
alludes to its,
poetic nature, which the Quran wants to emphatically
reject.
Mhmm. You know? This association with poetry.
So I think that just like
some terms should become,
staple,
and there's lots of words in the English
language that have now become that have come
from
the world of Islam, and they've they got
now become part of English vocabulary.
Right? So, like,
jihad and back in the eighties, intifada
and, like words like that just became part
of English vernacular.
Right? I think that words like aya
should actually be introduced as original Quran,
you know, vocabulary.
And I I personally don't,
you know, think that we should endorse I
don't say it's wrong, but I think it's
better
to endorse ayah as a construct as opposed
to converting ayah to verse because it doesn't
actually work in a literary sense.
Yeah. So I guess that that relates to,
what's mentioned in this book is called al
Farsilafil Quran.
So the word farsilafilah is referring to the
verse ending. Right. Sorry.
The aya ending. I have to be careful.
No.
I'm not saying I'm offended by it. As
a Western academic, I'm just used to start
using certain words in this context. But, yeah,
why not use the word aya? I fully
agree. And so the aya,
in a way, is seen to correspond
to the poetic concept of the Beit. Right?
Right. And rasul aya
or,
the farcilla
refers
to the the last letter.
So you have in in in poems, you
tend to have,
something called where
Rhyme scheme and Yes. It's it's something very
similar to rhyme Right.
Where the last letter matches.
So instead of using the word,
that's used in poetry,
certain alternatives are used for the Quran. Harsila.
Yeah. Just to kind of to separate it
from that. Is it just about the last
letter? Is it the last few syllables? Like,
and in can be a harsilaar.
Yeah. Sure. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. But in
in in sujair specifically,
it's the last letter that is operative. Got
it. Other things can be relevant.
And then even,
the idea of the qasidah, the structure of
the qasidah is replaced with the structure of
the surah,
and the Surah itself might have parts to
it.
You know? And and so there has been
a recognition of that. And I think, of
course, more and more now, there's a sense
of the structure of the Surah and does
it operate. And is there one structure, or
there's lots of different possible structures? But
Yeah. So classically as well, I mean, I've
got various books on Maqf and Ibtihah. I
just pulled a few things down from the
top shelf. I think just on that note,
just Mhmm. I think,
an important thing to mention is that the
Quran does employ
poetic
structures
on occasion,
and the Quran has elements of prose
in its syntax. So it it's hard to
pin it down as
poetic or prose based. It's this fusion of
the 2,
and it takes the license to depart from
1 or the other. Yeah. And, you know,
when we were at Iksa, one of the
problems one of the scholars was having with
the Ayatollahin, because that was his subject, is
everything else before is just so poetic and
it's so rhymey and it you know? And
all of a sudden you've got this long
verse and he's having this problem he said
verse, right, the long the longest time in
the Quran, Ayatul Dein, and it's a bunch
of clauses on loan agreements. Right? 2/82.
Yeah. So
so
that's actually part of the great uniqueness of
the Quran. One of the things that I
really like that Muslims Amir said in his
book on coherence was that the Quran should
not be judged on literary standards outside of
itself.
Right? We we we tend to judge poetry
against the backdrop of other kinds of poetry
or we tend to judge,
you know, something in a certain subject matter
by other literature that already exists in that
subject matter. So we already have preconceived notions
of chapter,
verse, sentence, paragraph. Like, these are these are
constructs that were built in us as we
were reading textbooks in school and journals and
articles or whatever. And now we bring those
preconceived notions to the study of the Quran.
The Quran has its own,
you know, structure. Surah is not a chapter.
Chapters go sequentially and build on a topic,
Surah's don't.
Ayahs are not verses,
you know. So,
and I think the the attempt to actually
replace the terminology
fasila,
which is actually, in a sense, like you
said, the sujairah is about the last letter,
and fasilah is broader than that. Mhmm. Right?
It is actually, I think,
in the spirit of that uniqueness of of
the Quran,
which I don't just think it's a
aqeedah based thing, like, a doctrinal thing, like,
because we think Quran is unique, it's unique.
No, actually, even
by literary standards, you can't fit it in
a genre. It doesn't fit, you know? Yeah.
That that's one of the that's one of
the things that does tax academics as well
is that if we wanna make comparisons, what
do we compare it to? We don't have
enough material. The Quran does seem to sort
of emerge
out of nowhere,
Although, you know, of course, from their perspective,
it's important to find
the thing
that can lead to it, but it's it's
that's actually a genuine challenge that they're facing.
So, and,
I don't think I brought anything about,
the the ayah counts. That's another thing. So
sometimes
in a particular surah,
you had different the schools of scholarship which
counted the ayahs a little bit differently. And
according to which mus'af they were using, they
would mark it in different ways. But that's
all to do with where they see the
ayah star. The logic stop. Yeah. So that's
why you sometimes see in,
this Surah has this number of,
ayahs according to the Kufin count, and it
has this number according to the Basran count,
for example. So this is more complex ayahs.
Listen. This is more complex than just
counting or not counting the Basmalah per Surah.
So that's gonna be part of it. And
and sort of Fatiha, because of some reasons,
it's it's pretty much agreed that Fatiha has
7 verses.
But even there, there's a difference on you
know, if you count the Bismillah,
then merge. You you consider the last
part a long aya to be 1 aya.
Whereas if you don't count the basmalah And
you bring then you could consider
and then that's the, you know, the end
of an ayah.
Sorry, before that. Well And I And then
here,
would be the start of a new ayah.
Right. So there could be differences like that.
Yeah. But that just shows, again, the attention
to detail that they're paying. Where is a
stop sensible and, and, you know, where is
it also if you're reciting not necessarily the
end of an ayah, where can you stop
and the meaning will still come out sounds?
And when do you have to go back
a little bit? So let's take a case
study,
and help me ideate this. Like, we have
something like ar Rahmanu alam al Quran.
Right?
Is there a historical
discussion about whether or not because it's a
single sentence
that it's 1 ayah, some say it's 1
ayah, or is it like in cases like
that, it's understood that this is 1, this
is 2, this is 3?
I mean,
examples like that because certainly, I'm not I
don't know if, there's any difference of opinion
on that because I don't have my,
eye account book handy right now.
But,
in cases like that, for example, aliflamimim,
aliflamra
sometimes is counted
Together with the Together with what with what
comes after it sometimes.
Maybe that's why the araab sometimes is that
the aliflamim is the Muqtada of the sentence.
Aliflamim dalika.
Yes. Yeah. So the aliflamim can refer back
to the aliflamim. Yeah. Yeah.
But,
my intuitive sense, I haven't read studied this
stuff, is that
this discussion did not take place over every
ayah,
but over certain
places. So even here, this is this is
one of the classical works of Alem as,
Sajanda 1 Sajja Wandi, sorry,
So he says, for example, after Al Rahman,
he says, you know, La, which is like,
don't stop here.
Why? Because Alham Al Quran
is it's Khabar. Right. So Al Rahmanu Allam
Al Quran. Right. So.
I'll tell you. Now that doesn't mean he
necessarily is telling you, do not stop as
a Qari. He's just saying, do not consider
it to be the complete
sentence. Woah. You just blew my mind. Do
not stop doesn't mean do not stop As
a party,
there's nothing spoiled in the meaning here.
By stopping. There's no bad effect caused by
stopping. Right. In some cases, the la really,
you should take at face value because
if you- But is there like a capital
la?
I mean La la la la la la
la la la la la. And this one
is like,
la la. La.
Well, the thing is that the science of
waqfiniteida
is intimately connected to the science of tafsir.
Correct. Because Makes sense. Where you're starting to
stop is according to what you understand of
the meaning.
Yeah. Don't stop. Like we said about Stop.
Eharab, I think,
eharab follows from meaning,
but we tend to think meaning follows from
Arab, which is kind of true as well.
Right. The same thing as stopping
follows from the meaning. That's right. Yeah. And
in a way, the meaning is generated by
where the stops are. So it kind of
works both ways. The point is you have
to have that sign you saw yesterday,
moving your real estate moving your real estate
agent.
Yeah. And
it was supposed to be Moving is the
name of the shop. Of the shop. And
they are your real estate but I just
read moving your real estate agent.
Right.
So so that's the Wukflasim.
Right? Yeah. If you continue here,
you spoil the meaning. That would be a
meme, A capital meme for
you. Like like, my favorite one is the
sign that says slow children playing.
Right.
Right.
So so sometimes it's important to stop. Yeah.
Yeah. But here the point is,
don't consider this to be,
the the end. And and for example then,
you're gonna say, you know, Arrahma, Allahum Akbar,
you know, because you haven't completed the sentence.
You should complete the sentence. I've actually been
in a tarawih like that. Oh, yeah. That's
true. They were done with the khatam.
Yeah. Right? So because they're done with the
khatam, they're like, now we're gonna do express
The 27th is over. Basically, Ramadan is over,
and this is like you know, like, senioritis
in high school?
Like okay. You don't have that here. So
their your essential classes in high school are
done. Uh-huh. And then you still have so
so you practically even if
you fail everything, you're still gonna graduate. So
you have this time where teachers let go
and you can come to class late and
cut. There's a senioritis in the 28th, 29th,
and 30th of Ramadan in,
like, much of the South Asian.
So, like, then the Qari comes in and
before then because the Taraweeh marathon is over,
the recitation of, like, 2 juts a night,
that's all done. Yeah. So the next day
we come
Oh my goodness. The next
one.
What
what is happening? Yeah. And the next one,
the guy, he was like,
Next one.
That is that is I thought the next
one was gonna be.
So
I think maybe just chopping up some eyes
as well.
I mean, this is a modern work on
Arad Feneb Tidad, which I really benefited from.
I'm sure I've got a lot of scribbles
in here. How come the modern works have
ugly covers and then the older ones have
really nice? This is so nice. This is
not nice. Look look at it. I love
this one. No. It's like a little like
it's like a kid. This is iron bro
colors. It's like, which is a good book.
This is good.
This is by an al Hasari scholar.
And,
it just it just helps to it's a
connection between
and meaning in the Quran. Ah. So it
really helps to get a sense of the
categories of meaning,
and, I know where where it makes sense
to stop. Of course, if you don't have
I mean, in English you just follow the
sentence. Does come up, right? Like if you
connect that conjunction with the previous sentence or
the next one,
you'd get- It affects meaning and there are
sometimes possibilities in meaning. So it's not that
one is right, one is wrong, but it's
a question of, you know, which way you
go.
Yeah.
So if you say, you know,
some of the scholars dislike this. They said
it's acceptable, but we prefer not because then
you're saying the Quran contains guidance.
But if you say
and then stop and say,
you see the Quran is guidance.
So sometimes you give her
preference to a particular view because of how
it affects the meaning. I could counter argue
that, but I won't right now. Yeah. Well,
if you stop in, then you can then
stop on.
And it's a really nice rhyme.
Mhmm.
And that's the only that's the only reason
I would do it. Apart from that, I
would never I would never say.
Right?
I did not know that. I just shook
it up now. The the southern comes out
when
Okay. I pulled up a subgenre because, I
wasn't planning to do this now, but since
we talked about near parallels.
Right? So let's start with, like, this where
this starts is someone called.
Ah, there we go.
Now this cover
you know I'm talking about cute covers?
Right. This this deserves some pondering. This article
my kids made it. But No. Well, yes.
But it's thought for you know, this there's
an Oscar,
deserved by this person.
They've written ayat,
and then they've got this sort of broken,
beautiful kind of ornament. Uh-huh. Right?
But, like,
the you know, it's it's supposed to be
together. Like, there is a sequence and there's
an ornamentation, but it seems to be
fragmented.
Are we discussing an art in an art
gallery right now? Like, who you're you're just
I I have a a little What was
the author thinking? I have a sideline in,
interpreting Arabic book covers. So, basically, this this
was the first
in its genre, which
is comparing,
as they call it, but which they mean
here similar or resembling or near parallel verses
in the Quran. In order to say look.
Somebody might say,
why is the Quran like this? And, yeah,
why is there a repeating competition? Or also,
why is his words changing? Why is it
not just the same then? Right, right, right.
So
it came as a kind of criticism, and
you can see that in the masterwork of
the genre, which is called.
Right. Which is Samiray quotes a lot. Oh,
yeah. And his,
his son, I think, wrote a a book
about it, actually.
There we are.
Yeah. But it's Muhammad's father.
Oh.
So it's his son.
Wow. Okay. Good family.
Yep. So
So you can see that, you know, the
concern is Responses to There's people coming, like,
with with some issues here and saying, oh,
why is the Quran so, you know, repetitive,
but at the same time, there's inconsistency between
why is it Right. Look. Look. Here it
was. Rabbi Musa
Which one did they say? Musa over there?
Did they say Rabi Musa w Haram? Did
they say Rabi Harun al Musa?
Pick 1. And, actually, I found that Ibn
Zubair,
said something like that. There's a point that
I used to make sometimes. People say, oh,
you know, why do you make up this?
Whoever said that from the Orlema? And then
I said, Ibn Zubair said it. Right? Which
was
well, first of all, we have to consider
that they were not speaking Arabic.
Yeah. I know that it shocks people sometimes.
Musa alaihi was not speaking Arabic.
Well, of course, he wasn't. Well, Faram was
too? Well, he was Egyptian. No. He wasn't
that kind of Egyptian yet. So when Allah
is narrating to us these conversations,
necessarily, there's something which and this is where
the people get upset because I used the
term for it. I said it's divine translation.
It is. Divine translation is not like human
translation. Right. Human translation involves loss of meaning
always, right? We try to translate the Quran.
We know we're losing stuff. We see what
we're losing, and there's much beside that we're
losing. Correct.
Divine translation doesn't involve loss.
If anything, it would involve bringing things out
which maybe were contained within
their
hearts. I yeah. I would I would phrase
it as divine translation as opposed to human
translation
is not just capable of translating words for
words, but rather
emotions, words, the temperature of the room, the
the scene, the tension.
It can capture so much more of that
reality
because it's not actually just taking someone's words,
but it's actually grasping that entire,
like, the the the entire scene in a
sense
and rendering it into words.
Like, somebody asked me it was actually,
an imam
on the side. He asked me,
what's so miraculous about Farahun's speech?
What's so great about it, Iblis' speech? Like,
we say Kalamullah, but it has Iblis' speech
and Firaun's speech. What's so like, what are
we what's so amazing about that? I was
like, what's amazing about that is Allah is
not just quoting these entities.
He's actually describing an entire reality
around them
with the way he's rendering what they said.
Additionally,
he said, but we should just learn about
good people. Like, he was having a philosophical
crisis. We should just learn, like, why are
we learning about bad people? I was like,
well, by opposites, things are known. Allah will
tell you in very eloquent fashion
the arguments of those
that are
off his path so you can recognize whether
those arguments are brewing inside you.
Right? Because you can't appreciate light if you
don't if you've never seen darkness.
You wouldn't know what that is.
So that's actually really,
the the the the the contemplating the notion
of Allah
actually
rerendering, if you don't wanna use translation. He's
rendering
conversations that happen between human beings
with a divine
and breath. And it's becoming You know? It's
becoming scripture
to study, to ponder.
It's not there as
in itself a historical
capture. Right. We tend to have absorbed certain
expectations because we watch news and whatever, and
so I want an actual recording of the
conversation. Right. I want I want the exact
you know, show me the exact words that
you're presenting.
Transcript.
Well, there's that. And then That's In addition,
you know, for example, did they say
Rabi Musa w Harun Rabi Harun w Musa?
Right. Now
And sometimes it works, and sometimes you might
say, maybe not.
Maybe this doesn't work so well. But, you
know, sometimes it's even the case that in
this Sura, this particular sound is more prominent,
so it fits that sound better. That's why
this word is used here and that word
is used there. I don't know if he
said this about
since we're on the subject. Sameer Rai talked
about it, and he gave a couple of
thoughts.
I added my own thoughts to it, but
his his thoughts were that,
in Surat
Ashuara,
harun is nearly absent and the verb conjugations
are all singular. There's a stress on Musa.
And you find even in this phrasing, Musa
has given priority, Rabi Musa wa harun.
In Surat Surataha,
from the very beginning, you've got Qala,
Rabbanah and, you know, Fatiya
and then hula and, you know,
even the dialogue is always in the dual
form.
So there's a constant reminder of the presence
of harun even if he's not exclusively being
quoted.
And there harun has been mentioned
as a as if there's an extra attention
being brought to harun in Suratah.
I would also argue while that's a consideration,
it doesn't have to be the only consideration.
I think that
it's it's quite likely that
this was said multiple times.
This was said more than once. And the
stylistic choice of choosing one of those quotes
here and another, they're like, you know, they'll
bring you every sahar. They'll bring you every
sahar.
Could also suggest because sahar is more mobile.
Right? It's it's more emphatic, like your expert
magician. It could be things escalated. And here
we have multiple terat as well because then
some of the readers
recited specific ones as sahar or as sahar.
Right.
So there's variation there as well in terms
of how it was realized and vocalized.
So the thing is,
when we get into the
semantic reasons
or the sort of overall surah, construction reasons,
these are fine. But sometimes, I think it's
because people are afraid of
much simpler explanations like
this one would rhyme, and this one wouldn't.
Right. Now, of course, then so,
oh, the the Quran is all about rhyme.
Not saying that at all. But it's it's
part of the the eloquence of the Quran
that there is, you know, the sound progression
mixed up. On that rhyme thing,
now we're talking about, well, the Quran's more
concerned about style as opposed to substance.
Right? That's that's if you step back, that's
the allegation. Yeah. But the the question is,
like, what substantial difference is there between Musa
and Harun and Harun and Musa? Right. And
sure, I mean, if we want to say,
oh, but which one did they really say?
Well, first of all, it was I think
I think linguistic psychology might might have answers
for us here. Like,
rhyme scheme, rhythm
actually has psychological impact on the listener.
You can say the same thing and you
can say it a certain way,
and there's obviously the dictionary meaning of what
you said, but there's a psychological impact of
how the way in which you said it.
So the the shift in
Musa and harunah harunah Musa in a in
a in an article, you can't see the
difference.
But actually someone
listening and being absorbed into the the sounds
of the ayat,
and they hear that, there's an effect that
would be lost. And
the the rhyme therefore isn't just necessarily to
keep the musical meter going Yeah. Or the
scheme
it it can have,
in a sense, I would say, unspoken psychological
effects,
right, that are part of the intent of
the Quran. The Quran is very deliberate in
not just delivering a message, but actually creating
a psychological,
emotional, spiritual effect on the listener.
Right? And I think this way of talking
about it is more meaningful and purposeful than
sometimes a very defensive posture, which which can
be to say, well, yeah, it could be
on more than one occasion. Or there were
there were several,
magicians. One of them said Musa and Harun,
the other one said Harun and Musa, and
this one was reported here. This one's you
know, that's Those are just nasty. That's all
the way. Look. If somebody's
trying to force a problem into the Quran,
you can drive off that problem by saying,
you know, that's done. But then it's better
to get to the point of view of,
okay, what is actually the positive,
effect from The the last thing on that,
though, just one additional comment about that that
I would make is that
so so rhyme scheme,
which is stylistic
and takes the the the larger psychological effect
that I was talking about into consideration,
doesn't exclude the possibility that there can be
multiple
intents. Like, a human speaker has one intent.
Hey. This rhymes better.
Right? But we're talking about the divine,
and he can have
he can kill multiple birds with one stone.
So he there there could be the element
of what is utmost obvious to me, it
rhymes better
this way, or the the the the rhythmic
flow, the, you know, the the the audible
flow is more beautiful and more impactful,
but there may be at the same time
other
purposes being met. And even that's the case
with with poets, and it's still understood that
if you if the reader comes to think
that the rhyme was there for his own
sake, then the poet has failed. Right. It
has to feel like the right word that's
carrying the right meaning, and
it fits the the rhythm and the rhyme.
So if this is the standards that humans
are held to, then, of course, we we
would,
attribute
the the highest purposes and highest
perfection to the speech of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala. One of my cousins' favorite rhyme was,
I'll take it if I want it. Earth
is my plonage.
I'm gonna make it work. It's gonna work
for me.
And he literally took it a few words.
There's probably there's probably an accent somewhere that
that works out.
So I guess here, I've got a kind
of broader genre,
which
it connects with something we talked about yesterday.
I I had this a genre there about
addressing potential contradictions in the Quran. So this
kind of belongs with that. Yeah. I just
had it separate for some reason.
So sometimes,
a lot of these works are are are
drawn from Ibn Zubair's work.
So this is Pafatul Rahman. It's it kind
of turns into, you know, if you ask
about this, then this is the answer. You
know? So it's kind of questions and answers.
On the
confusing
Especially on that. Yeah. So, like, why is
it like this here and it's like that
there? So just a quick answer. The ancient
samurai.
So these are some good, yeah, good classical
works which which address What's this called?
That's
called. Quran. Nice. So things that might cause
confusion. And then you have got classical ones.
This is another one.
Also
I've
seen that before. Yeah. But there's been Jamah.
So this is a it's a really beautiful
classical genre, and there's some some modern works
in that.
So the last thing here, I guess, was
Quran.
This is interesting because sometimes,
you know,
people get very upset about a word like
mushkil,
you know? Associated with Quran. Yeah. So there's
a whole
k. First of all, mushkil is not Urdu
word. It's a Arabic word. Right. Right? So
mushkil in Urdu means Difficult.
Yeah. Or or even a problem. Problem. Yeah.
Yeah. So
Quran is some is difficult, okay, but difficult
is relative to the reader who might struggle
with something. So
Quran, which he spoke about, this is a
very famous classical work.
This is to say there are things that
people
Can find difficult to process. Yeah. Or that
are confusing for some reason.
So it is necessary to to address them.
It's one of the genres of Quran.
We don't have to be,
upset about that. Yeah.
But it's not a shortcoming in the Quran,
of course. But the Quran at the end
of the day is there. Not fear. Quran.
I mean Yeah. For us, yeah. Quran, uncommon,
expressions in the Quran. And which was,
by Al Qadhi al Jabbar. This is a
Muertazil book. The Muertazilah were the first people
to write in this genre. But what he
means by Muertazilah is ayat, which again presents
some problem. But here from his perspective,
from the Mu'tazila school,
so those ayats are the ones that
others from Ahlus Sunnah would consider to be
the muhakam versus He considers them the mutashabih.
Right? So there is a little bit of
relativity and subjectivity onto Mujushabi.
There's a way of solving that,
and getting to some sense of what is
the foundational
ayat of the Quran, what are the things
that require explanation by referring them back to
the foundational verses
But it's interesting that
there's always going to be a little bit
of a tussle between who considers
this to be the clear and, you know,
definite verses and those ones need to be
interpreted in the light.
So this is this general situation with tafsir
of the Quran through the Quran,
when people sometimes
oversimplify
that doing
explaining the Quran through the Quran itself will
give you the definite correct answer,
and no one can doubt that answer and
we can challenge it.
Well, if Allah
is providing you the tafsir directly, then fine.
But if you are the one who is
connecting and comparing the ayat and drawing conclusion,
then you are subject to being right or
wrong.
And the biggest proof of that is just
the fact that you can see different
scholars have different And acting making different kinds
of connections. Even based on tafsir al quran.
Correct. And even different,
theological schools can use the same methods and
come to different conclusions. Correct.
Yeah. So I think that wraps up, our
our kind of one. That was quite,
quite a big one. But, yeah, Inshallah, I
think that this is
a very powerful genre, and it plays a
lot into
our work as we navigate. Because, you know,
our methodology is to just go into a
Surah and just
really dive in. Right? And then then one
of the issues that we do face is
the,
similar expressions found elsewhere.
How do we navigate that? What do we
what can we make of it? What can
we learn from it? So I think this
is an important space for us to
to give more attention to as we as
we study the Surah.
We'll
see you at the next session.
Muhammad Al Taher ibn Ashur.
We have a special course for you on
Surat Yaseen. I'd love you to get involved.
I'd love you to benefit
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