Nouman Ali Khan – The Quran Library #03 Quranic Language, Style & Inimitability
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The speakers discuss the use of multiple words in the Quran and the importance of considering the meaning of words in context. They touch on the use of multiple words in different context and the potential for conflict between them. They also discuss the use of words in the Arabic language and the theory of associational and psychological factors that make it beautiful. They mention various examples of the new idea that is not neither nor, but is a new idea across the corpus of the Arabic language, and discuss a doctor's work on the topic of the internet and the book of Al Parqab.
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I'm I'm saying that just to give the
sense of, like, there should be an ongoing
sense of scholarship. Right? Yeah. Somebody can come
with a fresh idea,
a challenging,
new thought. It's a radical
it's a radical proposal, honestly.
And then we don't just dismiss it because
it's radical, but we say, okay, let's subject
that to some, some thought processes.
I heard someone say about a scholar so
and so is a beast, and I was
like, I said, I'm not very respectful.
And some one other scholar was mentioned, he
said, oh, he's my dog.
You know? I used to say, but Habil
Bifray, he's he's my gangster.
He's so gangster. And some people are like,
he
did not commit any such crime, and he
wasn't he did not belong to the mafia.
No. He didn't. But he No. He killed
it though. He was he did kill it.
Okay. Bismillah, we're ready to move on to
the second floor of your library.
Yeah. So here I've got,
among other things we'll come to, a section
on
Quranic language,
words, lexicology,
Baleara. And to be honest, I've got bits
of that. And yeah. Yeah. I know. I
know. It's exciting. We've got bits of that
in other sections of the library as well.
Yeah. But in a way, this is just
a bit where that's that's what's going on
exclusively.
Got another part about Quranic dictionaries, for example.
But
to start with, the ones I brought down
are
largely to do with individual words in the
Quran.
Wait. Do you have
this is one we may be looked at
as a PDF sometimes, but Yeah. I've got
a physical way.
Individual words sometimes which are seen as synonyms.
Right. So let's just say they have the
same meaning.
Is that the case? You know, is it
the case that any word in the Quran
has the same meaning as another word in
the Quran? Well, for some people,
absolutely not. Cannot possibly be.
I'm not sure.
Like you people. Yeah. So
but at the same time I mean I
have a lot of sympathy with that because
the basic principle is
Allah
has used one word here and another and
another word there.
And it's very legitimate to ask
why this word here and that word there.
And each one, we would understand to be
most appropriate to its specific use and a
specific context.
That being said, I don't absolutely rule out
the 2 words mean the same. It's just
that there's always gonna be some shade of
difference.
But the meaning of a word depends on
different things. It depends on how it's
used. So if people start to use 2
words in exactly the same way, then they
would mean exactly the same. You know what's
interesting
about that?
One one of the terms that I wasn't
really as familiar with and
I got acclimated to over time is almahaani
i'thawani,
like secondary strands of meaning. So for example,
anger, rage, or whatever else
have a an 80%
commonality to them. They're referring to the same
thing. The basic meaning is the is the
same. And then there is a strand,
a a thin layer that's,
you know, kind of different about this word
from that word to that word.
And people that are eloquent
as opposed to general
folks, people that are, like, poetic in their
language, philosophical in their language, etcetera, they're very
careful about the choice of word,
not just thinking about the fundamental meaning, but
also thinking about that that thin layer, that
second layer.
And
which is why I find myself inclined more
towards the quranic usage of,
you know,
consideration to that second layer
in the in the study of synonyms. I
fully agree with that. I would say also
that,
the choice of a word can sometimes be
because that's just the word that goes with
that other word. It became Right.
It became paired with it. It became appropriate
to use with it, even if it's the
meaning that's not different. Right.
And sometimes it has to do with the
sound of that word. It fits better within
this particular ayah.
Even did I say the ending word because
of rhyme.
Right? Although this is not to do with
words, why is it in one Surah,
another?
Right. Now one can have different points of
view and explanations for that, but some of
the scholars very comfortably just said, Yeah.
Because their verse endings end. This person's gonna
say, no, not not. Right. Disagree. Sorry about
that.
Yeah. So
So some scholars
really just consider sometimes the change in or
the use of a word or an order
for the purpose of maintaining the philosophy of
the rhyme scheme
that creates an like, an audible harmony. Which
in itself
is part of what the Quran is. It
is beauty and it is sound and it
is, of course, meaning is the primary consideration,
but it's not the only consideration. You know,
again, like, on that note,
I used to have more compartmentalized
thinking. Like, I used to think of style
as something separate and substance as something separate.
But the more I study this area,
the way you communicate something, even some of
the stylistic
components of language like antenations
or
the number of syllables in your sentence,
stress where you place stress in a sentence.
These are all matters of style, but they
can actually have
a significant impact on the impression you leave
on your listener. Mhmm. Right? So
it's not as simple to say, okay. Well,
this is only for the consideration of rhyme.
Rhyme can actually subconsciously
connect a subject
to what is
going on before and create a sense of
continuity.
And it so, you know, it's it's not
as it's not like mathematics, like, language issues
are black and white. There's actually psychological
and even subconscious
things to consider.
And it's interesting and not directly related, and
it's something I'm curious to study more of
the impact of,
you know, poetic rhyme, music, rhythm,
on the way that messages are processed.
Mhmm. Right? Like, even children, like, children's rhymes.
Why are they rhymes? It's not just I
wouldn't argue it's just because they're easy to
memorize.
There's something because kids can memorize anything. They
can memorize
actually quite a bit. Yeah. But putting it
in a certain way And even when you
tell somebody a certain
wisdom or something, you know,
finders, keepers, losers, weepers. Right. You know, this
sounds true because it rhymes. You know? Yeah.
There's there's an impact from that. Yep. And
because it oh, well, it rhymes. It must
be a very well thought of it. The
one who locates something gets to maintain possession
of it. And the one who I don't
believe that.
That's completely unconvincing.
So so like, okay, going back to the
synonyms in particular, so this is a modern,
probably from masters and PhDs. This is contemporary
also. Right? The Yeah. Yeah.
Most of these are, and and and then
you've got some of the sort of older
works, Al Farooq Logawiya of,
and Right. Kim as Dinwiddie as well. Yeah.
So the Farooq literature,
exists to kind of say,
there's no true synonymy in the Arabic language
or particularly in the Quran. Right.
And then you've got works
which do kind of they say at least
a certain word, one particular word in the
Quran.
Does it have one meaning throughout the Quran,
or does it have multiple different things? It
have different. Yeah. So when they say
that's sort of looking at
how a word travels across the whole scripture
with the same meaning, but then you have
another field which is called
Quran. Quran. Yeah.
Or called.
This is an important subject because a lot
of times
there are now especially people are saying, look
at how Allah used this word throughout the
Quran.
It always has the same. No, it doesn't.
Like, and that's not even true of natural
just language.
That that's not how language works. Yeah. You
know? You you can you can have mathematics
again. Yeah. Again. You know, equals just because
it's the same word in the same letter.
Exactly. It really depends on what's going on
in the specific place. Yeah. And it doesn't
take into consideration many factors.
Like, for example,
words can have,
antonym meanings, the opposite meaning in different context.
Like an easy example in English is something
like screen.
Right? Mhmm. If there's a screen between you
and I, it's a barrier to view. Mhmm.
Right? But if I was screening a film
or if you were screening a documentary, it's
the exact opposite. I'm showing you a film.
Yeah. Right? It's not it's not a barrier
to entry. It's the viewing itself. So so
words can have very different implications. And the
the other side of this is, like, figures
of speech. Like, if I said, man,
that guy was a monster
in the in the game. He was just
a monster when he played that game.
The word monster is not being used in
the dictionary meaning of monster.
It's being bought is this happening here, what
we call is. And so, like I heard
someone say about a scholar so and so
is a beast. And I was like, I
said, not very respectful. And some one other
scholar was mentioned said, oh, he's my dog.
You know? I used to say about,
he's he's my gangster.
He's so gangster. And so we go like,
he did not commit any such crime, and
he wasn't did not belong to the mafia.
No, he didn't. But he No, he killed
it though. He did kill it. Yeah. So,
yeah, these are a few different dimensions
of of words. But, again, like, it's good
to know the range of things,
relating to these words because I have that
block. Oh, yes. This was actually my examiner
and my PhD. Was he? She's this is
Was she? I'm sorry. This is.
Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. And it's got an
introduction by Aisha Bintashaldi,
the
famous Woah. Oh, that's heavy. Yeah.
Because she was a supervisor of that thesis.
So, yeah,
versus
in a way, there's a little bit
of even conflict between these different parts of
the discussion. Yeah.
But that you will have to read about
in explaining the Quran through the Quran when
it comes out.
This is a funny one.
So this person really doesn't agree with the
field of but
the title ends up being contradictory because
is the opposite
of So he wants to say there's
no variation of meaning. Every word in the
Quran has a set meaning. So he should
say Quran
because
means parallels and
So okay. Let me ask this author a
question. Just you answer. You pretend to be
the author. Okay? I'll try, but I haven't.
I should read that.
So
Right? So
so ama blind.
So the blind don't have to go to
battle. Mhmm. There's no harm on them if
they don't go to battle.
Right?
Mhmm. And then the used in the Quran,
you know,
Well, that was quite easy.
There's the same meaning.
It is basically the same meaning because even
when we translate it, we would probably say
blind and blind.
Right. But there is a difference in the
application of the meaning or in the secondary
level. That part is fairly easy.
One is literally blind. 1 is metaphorically blind.
Metaphorically blind. But it's not a different meaning
of the word.
But once you say metaphorically,
it is different. It's fundamentally different. Again, a
lot of these things, it just depends on
how you want to calibrate. Just the Yeah.
Yeah. But I don't agree with it. Of
course, I believe that there are wujud in
the Quran. But the point is also that
you can go to excesses in the wujud
approach where you say,
oh, kitab actually has been 17 different things
or something, you know, and then in reality
they all basically mean book but sort of
different sense, different nuance, different particular aspect.
So anyway, that's that's one branch.
And then let's see. I've got various things
to do with Quranic linguistics.
Is an important subject, so the metaphorical usages
Figures of scale. A very beautiful
book by,
Shekel Matani who's the same person who wrote
that response to Abdu Subhashim we saw earlier.
Oh, okay.
So it's nice. There's connections sometimes in the
in in the library due to the author.
Right.
So these are the kind of this is
the kind of thing that keeps you awake
and keeps you alive actually. I'm gonna just
throw these down here and we'll we'll we'll
pick out a few more. You you just
told me about this one the other day
and I was like, yeah. Yeah. You know,
because I forgot that I bought it. And
then I remembered and I was very happy
because
the title just itself kind of draws you
in. Yeah.
Yeah. So where you have a kind of
expected form for the sentence and then where
for some reason, it was put in a
different order.
Something was brought forward.
Instead of a noun, you've got a verb.
Instead of a verb, you've got a noun.
Instead of definite, indefinite Instead of definite Then
you've got generally what's called, yeah,
also.
Falls into
is sort of slightly more specific than probably
what I discussed in this book. So, yeah,
so this is a really fun exercise
as as, you know, the stepping stone into
Balaha studies.
And actually, even at the most advanced levels,
it really works. It's a formula that
even as you advance in your layers of
understanding it continues to work as you hear
something said from Allah and you ask yourself
what was the most basic fundamental way of
communicating this idea using this vocabulary?
Not with this arrangement, not with the sequence
of words, not with this choice of what
was done to the word. And then you
say,
well, that's the base. Now how did Allah
depart from that base and choose this alternate
expression that normal people would never have used,
in the way that he did. And that,
you know,
brings out the the
kind of the
the especially
thanks to the same I just my life
just got saved. So,
very cool.
Yeah. So there's so many things as well
that are written within
the context of air jazz. Yeah. We're talking
about the miraculous aspect because
when you study Balaga
or the of the Quran that's linked to
the subject of what makes the Quran so
beautiful, what makes the Quran miraculously beautiful Right.
And eloquent.
And in fact, the field of balaka
emerged from that question. Yes. Actually, what makes
the Quran miraculous? What is this challenge that's
presented in the Quran to produce something like
it? Like it? In what respect? In what
respect are they unable to do so?
So in order to answer that question, scholars
got to work on how does the the
Quran work and the Arabic language work
and they develop this theory.
So we have,
yeah, I'll come to it in a moment,
but.
Right. It's the sort of the progenitor of
this field. He wrote the Quran, yes?
Yeah. So Yeah and then his other book
here is Asrar Al Balaha. So okay, yeah.
The reason I've got it there is because
Muhammad Abu Musa
is one of the, you know, gray contemporary
Balaga scholars and really the the lead
manna al Azhar in this field.
He has specifically done,
like an introduction to those books. And
so but from that, the field of balaga
actually flowered and and developed. And it became
the established understanding that
the Quran is miraculous because of its eloquence
And the eloquence can be studied in certain
ways, but then, of course, no study is
going to encompass the reality. All the dimensions
of that eloquence. Yeah. So
you had Quran.
Cool.
Many such things. Why do I wanna steal
these books from you? Why is it like
I'm constantly fighting?
I'm just reminding myself
constantly as I'm sitting here.
Well, you know, it's not it's not if
it's actually left open like that. It's only
if it was in a protected,
if you broke into my house Yes. Yes.
That would be the problem.
So
I mean, just there's so many of this
type.
Yeah.
Oh, wait. What? Who? What? We
don't have time. We don't have time. I
know we don't have time, but, like
oh, bro.
I've been looking for this, like
oh, you should have asked?
I really should have asked.
Yeah. That one. Yeah. Yeah.
Alright. But, look,
this one caught your eye. This one did
catch my eye. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna
put this on the side over here because
you you Sir, my friend.
So this yeah. Go ahead. It just no.
It just saying it shows you, like, there's
so many ways to come at this subject
and so many individual things to write. Yeah.
I think we should be translating some of
this. At least gives our audience some idea
because we're geeking out, and then, like, they're
like, what? What? That's like a lot they
said a lot of Arabic stuff. Well, I'll
invite translation interns to come and they
Okay. Let me give you guys some some
idea. Okay. Dalalas Taqdimat Taqir. Quran Kareem. I
looked through a couple of pages of this
book. I thought it was fascinating.
This is a book dedicated to sequence of
phrasings in the Quran, so they can be
within a sentence or items in a sentence.
So the entry that I looked at just
randomly
was an in which multiple prophets are mentioned,
but they're not mentioned in chronological order, and
they're not mentioned in the order of, let's
just say, the the the prophets of the
greatest resolve first.
So they're mentioned in an order that's kind
of hard to wrap your head around, and
he's looking at classical scholarship,
scholars that did work on tafsir from a
linguistic point of view, and And they're trying
to figure out what could we learn from
this sequence. Right? So he's paying attention to
if Allah is seeing heaven and earth or
earth and heavens and or if he's saying,
you know, you know, trees and mountains, why
not mountains and trees? And, like, he's paying
attention to small items that are together in
that way,
and and digging into the the linguistic
subtleties
that we can learn something from. So that's
this book. Really, really fascinating stuff.
A few that we skipped through quickly,
this is, the style of transition in the
Quran. So Allah will be talking about something
in the past tense, switch over to the
present tense, or he'll speaking about something in
this in the singular, all of a sudden
you find the plural, things like that. Or
or subject will change abruptly, and there's this
is a study of what could those things
entail and what can be what what makes
it beautiful.
This is
so
the Quran's style of expressing ideas
and the Quran's
expressions, figures of speech and expressions
that are really quite miraculous in how much
they pack and and they contain.
And so this was studied as something that
it makes it miraculous. These are a couple
I was gonna show you particularly as well
in terms of the topics.
Yeah.
Well, wow.
So Quran expression
and
the psychological,
you know, indicators
within it.
Really interesting. I haven't read this one yet,
but when I I saw it and thought
of you I'm gonna I'm not gifting you
it, but I'm just I'm gonna I'm I've
you already have.
Just a moment.
Show me.
You think that's gonna stop me? You're gonna
stop me, boo? I'm gonna get a stamp
made and put it on top of it.
I got a stamp for oh my god.
That's that's that's pretty that's
I can't even
yeah. One second. Can't be undone.
So,
yeah, then we have,
we have sections here, you could see,
for some interesting authors at the moment. So
I don't know if you've had a chance
to see this book.
I have not.
I will tell you something about it.
And then we've got Sheikh Samirai.
Of course, doctor Samirai.
Like, I've read all of his books. You've
probably read all of this. Yeah. I've read
all of that.
So I even read books.
I'm not sure. Seriously, like,
This one,
this is an author called doctor Bassam Assai.
Actually,
he writes it like that in English, but
it's a in Arabic. Oh, so this is
the the English book? There's an English book
called
the miracle.
Is that the one where he compares
Hadith language to Quran language?
Or no he uses? Not exactly. No Quranic
phrasings that are not found any precedent of
it is found in any Arabic literature. So
his his basic idea is
what made the Quran miraculous and makes him
miraculous is that
just about every turn of phrase and expression
in the Quran is completely new. Unfound. Yeah.
And yet that is to say, he studied
through Arabic poetry,
and yet it was intelligible to his audience.
So that is a miracle in itself that
they were hearing something
which
they didn't know anything of it before, and
yet they could make sense. So, like, you
know how we say neither nor? I believe
one of his examples was.
So neither nor is
or
Right? That's neither nor, but there's
here. Right? And I believe his argument was
across the corpus of hadith and across the
corpus of anything that's found in the Arabic
language,
are never combined.
It's an exclusive Quranic
Yeah. Invention
that So it's it's definitely an interesting argument.
I would say that this thesis needs
some cross examination. Yeah. Because what happens is
also people get very excited by by new
things. Yeah. In itself, this is a new
idea.
The whole I've got here there's a whole
the whole history of scholarship on what is
the miracle of the Quran? What is the?
So he's got he's got a new idea
here. Sheikh Mohammed Abdul Duraz had a new
idea, which is that
the miracle of the Quran is always in
its
conciseness.
It's izaz. Okay.
Right.
So these things as well, someone can come
along later and say, well, you know, for
example here,
to what extent can you really compare the
Quran to pre
quranic materials when we don't have that much
actually to go on? Correct.
You know, can we really be sure that
nobody said
before
just based on the fact that we don't
have any existing poems? Yeah. So anyway,
I'm saying that just to give the sense
of there should be an ongoing sense of
scholarship, Right? Yeah. Somebody can come with a
fresh idea,
a challenging
New thought. And then the same quote. It's
a radical it's a radical proposal, honestly.
And then we don't just dismiss it because
it's radical, but we say, okay. Let's
subject that to some, some thought processes.
So,
you don't you don't just spend lots of
time because you talk about him in the
day night and sleep.
But,
this is maybe his more recent kind of
development.
Yeah. It's it's not as recent, but yeah.
Yeah. So
is is is how he's taking this sort
of grammar.
This is the marriage between grammar and actually.
Yeah. It's a remarkable work. Absolutely remarkable work.
Yeah. And,
so then
towards now something more recognizable as
rather than as it were sort of this
Even though this is not I think it's
but I think then after that is kind
of
a sporadic collection of surahs.
Yeah. So I think sometimes some of his
works are repackaged.
Yeah. But, you know, that's that's fair enough.
It makes it makes it more accessible. Yeah.
And then the last from this section is
doctor Muhammad Abu Musa. He's right behind you.
Yeah. So I'm very curious about him, actually.
That's I'm not I haven't been introduced to
his works as much. I'm very ignorant. So
this is gonna be you? My new best
friend?
Oh, yeah. Main 2, to be honest, I
haven't had the chance to
really
get into his works.
I'm a bit intimidated by them if I'm
honest.
But he
He is known as.
Really?
No. I'm intimidated.
So let's see some of the important titles.
This is the one. So this is the
scariest one, so I'm gonna leave that one
alone for a sec. Yeah. So he he's
going into, like so as I mentioned, that's
his introduction to the two books of Al
Jorjani, that those are just the 2 books
of Al Jorjani next week. Right.
But that gives you, you know, the the
penitry insight.
I mean,
specific.
I'm never gonna get that one, but I
never have handed to you.
So it says this is based on,
the.
He's studying.
So again,
is is one of the founders of the
field of
So this is just sort of looking at
the history of Balagha as well.
So so this one is more about and
this one is about.
Woah.
That's some juicy stuff, man.
It is.
What country comes out when I'm really impressed?
Al Ma'an Al Quranih. This was the most
recent one that I got
because I I told a dear friend of
mine that I wanted to
source it for me. I don't have friends
like that.
Shoot.
Shoot.
Yes. So there's, there's an There's a treasure
here. Ocean to plow through. Treasures.
And again, if we're gonna if we're gonna
raise our own
game, you and
I,
and those who are with us and those
who want to be with us,
You know? We gotta start juicing these books.
These are these are the people whose You
gotta put these books in a blender and
But, also, you know, it's your time with
a book
is is is shaping a thought process, as
I say. Absolutely. Forming neuro pathways and,
and looking at it through the lens of
of scholars of the caliber of Sheikh Hamid
Abu Musa or doctor Fadid Samrai,
you know, this is what this is the
best guide that you can have Right. Through
the whole tradition. And these people have decades
behind them of,
you know, diving into this material.
Yeah. They spend their whole time just constantly
Oh, somebody, you know, Stupidly thinks okay. Well,
you know, there's a Jirjani's book. Why do
I have to have his commentary on Jirjani?
Because
I'm an idiot. And if I go to
Jirajani, my head's gonna explode. Or even if
I think I know what he's saying, I
won't know what he's saying because
you need to have a specialist look at
specialist language and understand
what he's talking about to really benefit from
it. And that's why primer's like that.
Golden. That's golden. That's what,
doctor Samir Ra'i did on Zamafshari too. He
did, you know, and the Zamafshari
or Nahu and the Zamafshari that he did
that. Yeah. That's right. They both yeah. So
that so you could see as compliment, you
said, because,
Abu Musa has his balaga
And,
maybe has his. Yeah. Yeah.
So okay. Remarkable stuff, man.
2nd floor is my favorite floor, I think.
I could keep I can stay busy with
this and just disappear.
Yeah. So inshallah, I think next time we
will think about the Quranic subjects.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Organic subjects.
Okay. There is this
outline
horizontal set of books. I don't think they
belong in this category. Do they? We gotta
talk about them separately. Yeah. We'll talk about
them separately. Alright. We gotta do. Yeah. But,
yeah, this has been really cool.
Guys. I hope you guys are enjoying it.
And frankly, I don't care if you are
because I'm really enjoying it. So
thanks, Rheb.
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