True Teachings Of Islam

Bell’s Introduction to the Holy Qoran

1 . Translations and studies

The scholarly concern of Europeans with the quran QurŸån may be said to have begun with the visit of Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, to Toledo in the second quarter of the twelfth century. He became concerned with the whole problem of Islam, collected a team of men and commissioned them to produce a series of works which together would constitute a scholarly basis for the intellectual encounter with Islam. As part of this series a translation of the quran QurŸån into Latin was produced by an Englishman, Robert of Ketton (whose name is often deformed into Robertus Retenensis) and was complete by July 1143. Unfortunately this translation and the companion works did not lead to any important developments of scholarly Islamic studies. Numerous books were written in the next two or three centuries, but Islam was still the great enemy, feared and at the same time admired, and what was written was almost exclusively apologetics and polemics, sometimes verging on the scurrilous and the pornographic. 1

The upsurge of energy at the Renaissance, the invention of printing and the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe combined to produce a number of works on Islam in the first half of the sixteenth century. These included an Arabic text of the quran QurŸån, published at Venice in 1530, and the Latin translation of Robert of Ketton, published along with some other works at Bale in 1543 by Bibliander. 2

Interest continued in the seventeenth century, and among various books which appeared there may be mentioned the first translation of the quran QurŸån into English (1649); this was made by a Scotsman, Alexander Ross who also wrote a book on comparative religion, and was based on a French translation and not directly on the Arabic. 3

A new standard of scholarship was reached by the Italian cleric Ludovici Marracci who in 1698 at Padua produced a text of the quran QurŸån based on a number of manuscripts, accompanied by a careful Latin translation. Marracci is said to have spent forty years of his life on quranic QurŸånic studies and was familiar with the chief Muslim commentators. A comparable level of scholarship was attained by George Sale, whose English translation, accompanied by a ‘Preliminary Discourse’ giving a brief objective account of Islam, appeared at London in 1734. Sale’s interpretation was based on the Muslim commentators, especially baydawi al-Bayðåwæ, and was accompanied by explanatory notes. There have been many subsequent editions of this book, and the translation and notes are still of value. 4

The nineteenth century saw further advances in quranic QurŸånic scholarship, beginning with Gustav Flügel’s edition of the text in 1834, of which there have been many subsequent editions, some being revised by Gustav Redslob. The chief advances in the study of the quran QurŸån were made by persons who were also, and indeed primarily, interested in the life of muhammad Muøammad. The first of these was Gustav Weil whose biography of muhammad Muøammad (1843), unfortunately not based on the best sources, was followed by a Historische-kritische Einleitung in den Koran (Bielefeld, 1844; second edition 1878). The two successors of Weil, Aloys Sprenger and William Muir, both spent many years in India and there found older and better sources for the biography. To Sprenger belongs the credit of first discovering these sources and realizing their importance. His first essay in biography appeared in English at Allahabad in 1851, and was not completed, being ultimately replaced by a three-volume work in German, Das Leben und die Lehre des muhammad Moøammad (Berlin, 1861-25). Some 36 pages in the introduction to the third volume are devoted to the quran QurŸån, discussing the distinction between Meccan and Medinan suras and the collection of the quran QurŸån. Muir followed in Sprenger’s footsteps, but, as noted on p. 112, went more thoroughly into the chronology of the suras. His conclusions on this question were contained in an essay on the ‘Sources for the Biography of Mahomet’ which was attached to his Life of Mahomet (London, four vols., 1858-61; subsequently abridged and revised in various editions); and they are stated more fully in The Coran, its Composition and Teaching; and the Testimony it bears to the Holy Scriptures (London, 1878).
The growing interest in Islamic studies in Europe led the Parisian Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1857 to propose as the subject for a prize monograph ‘a critical history of the text of the quran Coran’. It was specified that the work was to ‘rechercher la division primitive et le caractère des différents morceaux qui le composent; déterminer autant quil quŸil est possible, avec laide lŸaide des historiens arabes et des commentateurs et dapres dŸaprès l’examen des morceaux eux-mêmes, les moments de la vie de muhammad Mahomet aux quels ils se rapportent; exposer les vicissitudes que traversa le texte du quran Coran, depuis les rézitations de muhammad Mahomet jusqua jusquŸà la récension définitive qui lui donna la forme où nous le voyons; déterminer dapres dŸaprès l’examen des plus anciens manuscrits la nature des variantes qui ont survécu aux récensions’. The subject attracted three scholars: Aloys Sprenger; the Italian Michele Amari, who was beginning to make a name for himself as the historian of Islamic Sicily; and a young German Theodor Nöldeke who in 1856 had published a Latin disquisition on the origin and composition of the quran QurŸån. The latter scholar won the prize, and an enlarged German version of the prize-gaining work was published at Göttingen in 1860 as Geschichte des quran qorans Qoråns, and became the foundation of all later quranic QurŸånic studies.

The subsequent history of Nöldeke’s book is itself a veritable saga. In 1898 the publisher suggested a second edition; and as Nöldeke himself could not contemplate this, the task was entrusted to a pupil, Friedrich Schwally. Schwally took up the task with traditional German thoroughness; but because of the thoroughness and for various other reasons the publication of the second edition was spread out over many years. The first volume, dealing with the origin of the quran QurŸån, eventually appeared at Leipzig in 1909; and the second, on ‘the collection of the quran QurŸån’, in 1919. Schwally, however, died in February 1919, after virtually completing the manuscript, and it had to be seen through the press by two colleagues. Schwally had also done no more than preliminary work for a third volume on the history of the text, but his successor at Königsberg, Gotthelf Bergsträsser, agreed to make himself responsible for the volume. Two sections of the volume (about two-thirds of the whole) were published in 1926 and 1929. A further quantity of important material had come to light by this time and delayed the third section. Next Bergsträsser died unexpectedly in 1933; and it fell to yet another scholar, Otto Pretzl, to bring the work to completion in 1938, sixty-eight years after the first edition and forty years after the first suggestion of a second edition. It is truly a remarkable work of scholarly cooperation, and deservedly maintains its position as the standard treatment of the subject, even though some parts of it now require revision.

Nöldeke’s 1860 volume by no means exhausted the problems of quranic QurŸånic study. He himself made further contributions, notably in the opening section ‘Zur Sprache des Korans’ (pp. 1-30) of his Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft (Strassburg, 1910). Hartwig Hirschfeld after some earlier work on the quran QurŸån published in 1902 in London his New Researches into the Composition and Exegesis of the Qoran, of which something has been said above (p. 112). The ‘socialist’ biographer of muhammad Muøammad, Hubert Grimme, in connection with his work on the biography, pursued independent lines of research into the composition and chronology of the quran QurŸån as described above (p. 112). While the twentieth century has seen many further books and articles on the quran QurŸån, the most notable work of a general kind has been Koranische Untersuchungen by Josef Horovitz (Berlin, 1926), which deals with the narrative sections of the quran QurŸån and the proper names. Arthur Jeffery’s Foreign Vocabulary of the quran QurŸån (Baroda, 1938) is a useful reference volume, summarizing much previous work and making fresh contributions; there have of course been many advances in the last thirty years. His Materials for the Study of the Text of the quran QurŸån (p. 44 above) is a mark of his interest in the field in which Bergsträsser was also working. The volume containing Ignaz Goldziher’s lectures on Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung (Leiden, 1920) is outstanding in its field (cf. p. 167 above).

In the last half-century three men have devoted a large part of their time to quranic QurŸånic studies. The oldest of these, Richard Bell, set out the first-fruits of his work on the quran QurŸån in the form of lectures on The Origin of Islam in its Christian Environment (London, 1926). The major results of his work, though in a slightly incomplete form, are to be found in his translation-The quran QurŸån: Translated, with a critical re-arrangement of the Surahs (two vols., Edinburgh, 1937, 1939). Unfortunately it has not proved possible to publish the mass of notes which he left, explaining in detail the reasons for his conclusions. This lack is partly made good by his articles (mentioned in the list below) and partly by his Introduction to the quran QurŸån (Edinburgh, 1953), of which the present volume is a revised version.

In the case of Régis Blachère the study of the life of the prophet, entitled Le Problème de Mahomet (Paris, 1952) and based on the premiss that the quran QurŸån is the only reliable source, appeared after the other work on the quran QurŸån. This latter was focussed on a translation: Le Coran: traduction selon un essai de reclassement des sourates (three vols., Paris, 1947-51). The dating and arrangement of the suras has already been discussed (p.112). The first of the three volumes is entirely devoted to an introduction, of which a second edition was published separately in 1959. This deals with the collection of the text, the variant readings, the history of the text and similar matters. Specially valuable is the section on ‘amélioration graphique’ or improvement of the script, since this includes the results of the study of existing ancient copies of the quran QurŸån.

It is well known to the colleagues of Rudi Paret that he has been working for many years on the quran QurŸån. As in the case of Bell a small book of a general kind came first: muhammad Mohammed und der quran Koran (Stuttgart, 1957). This is a short account of the life of the prophet which for the most part passes over the military and political aspects and concentrates on the religious aspects, especially those for which there is quranic QurŸånic material. He has also published some articles, such as ‘Der quran Koran als Geschichtsquelle’ (Der Islam, xxxvii/1961, 24-42). At the centre of his work, however, has been the quran QurŸån itself; and a complete German translation appeared in four ‘Lieferungen’ between 1963 and 1966 at Stuttgart. The interpretation of each term has been based on an exhaustive comparison of all the instances of it and of cognate terms throughout the quran QurŸån. The reader may thus have a high degree of confidence that he has been given an accurate rendering of what the quran QurŸån meant for the first hearers. There is no structural analysis, apart from a division into paragraphs; and there are no notes apart from explanatory additions to the text and footnotes giving a literal rendering where for the sake of style or clarity the main translation is somewhat free. Further publications are promised in the shape of a commentary or discussions of various problems. It is to be hoped that these, which will indeed be the ‘crown of a lifeswork’ will not be long delayed.

Of English translations of the quran QurŸån those by J. M. Rodwell (1861) and E. H. Palmer (1880) were not without merit, but are now passed over in favour of more recent ones. That of Marmaduke Pickthall (The Meaning of the Glorious quran Koran, an explanatory translation; London, 1930), though it does not read well, is interesting as the work of an Englishman who became a Muslim and had his translation approved by Muslim authorities in Cairo. Another translation by a Muslim is that in the Penguin Classics (1956), The quran Koran, by N. J. Dawood, an Iraqi with an excellent command of English. His translation is very readable, since his aim is that it should always be meaningful to a modern man, but this leads to some departures from the standard interpretations. The most satisfactory English translation so far is that of Arthur J. Arberry of Cambridge. He first published The Holy quran Koran, an Introduction with Selections (London, 1953), which was an experimental translation of selected passages using various methods. This was followed in 1955 by a complete translation entitled The quran Koran Interpreted (two volumes, London). The method adopted for this was to put the whole into short lines, regardless of the length of the Arabic verses but varying to some extent according to the subject-matter. The diction is carefully chosen; and the translation as a whole has managed to suggest something of the grace and majesty of the original Arabic. The present writer’s Companion to the quran QurŸån (London, 1967), based primarily on the Arberry translation, is intended to provide the English reader with a minimum of explanatory notes.

The following is a small selection of useful books and articles not otherwise mentioned in the text or notes of this volume. A fairly complete list of articles will be found in the relevant sections of J. D. Pearson’s Index Islamicus, 1906-1955 (Cambridge, 1958) and supplements. Books as well as articles, mostly with brief comments, are listed in Abstracta Islamica, published annually as a supplement to Revue des études islamiques (Paris). Books and articles up to 1922 are discussed in the work of Pfannmüller mentioned in note 2 to this chapter.

OLDER WORKS

• Christian Snouck-Hurgronje: ‘La légende quran qoranique qorånique d’Abraham et la politique religieuse du Prophète muhammad muhammad Mohammed’ (1880; French translation by G. H. Bousquet, Revue africaine, 95 [1951], 273-88).
• I. Schapiro: Die haggadischen Elemente im erzählenden Teile des quran qurans Korans (first section only), Leipzig, 1907.
• J. Barth: ‘Studien zur Kritik und Exegese des quran qorans Qoråns’, Der Islam, vi (1915-16), 113-48.
• B. Schrieke: ‘Die Himmelsreise muhammad Muhammeds’, ibid. 1-30.
• Wilhelm Rudolph: Die Abhängigkeit des quran qorans Qoråns von Judentum und Christentum, Stuttgart, 1922.
• W. W. Barthold: ‘Der quran Koran und das Meer’, Zeitschrzfl der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 83 (1929), 37-43.
• Karl Ahrens: ‘Christliches im quran Qoran: eine Nachlese’, ibid. 84 (1930), 15-68, 148-90.
• Heinrich Speyer: Die biblischen Erzählungen im quran Qoran, Gräfenhainichen, 1931 (reprinted 1961).
• D. Sidersky: Les origines des légendes musulmanes dansle quran Coran, Paris, 1933.
• K. Ahrens: muhammad Muhammedals Religionsstifter, Leipzig, 1935.
• Articles by Richard Bell on quranic QurŸånic subjects (complete list):
• ‘A duplicate in the quran Koran; the composition of Surah xxiii’, Moslem World, xviii (1928), 227-33.
• ‘Who were the hanifs Øanifs?’, ibid. xx (1930), 120-4.
• ‘The Men of the araf Aÿråf (Surah vii: 44)’, ibid. xxii (1932), 43-8.
• ‘The Origin of the id ÿId adha al-Adøå’, ibid. xxiii (1933), 117-20.
• ‘Muhammad’s Call’, ibid. xxiv (1934), 13-19.
• ‘Muhammad’s Visions’, ibid. xxiv. 145-54.
• ‘Muhammad and previous Messengers’, ibid. xxiv. 330-40.
• ‘Muhammad and Divorce in the quran QurŸån’, ibid. xxix (1939), 55-62.
• ‘Sõrat hashr al-Øashr: a study of its composition’, ibid. xxxviii (1948), 29-42.
• ‘muhammad Muøammad’s Pilgrimage Proclamation’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1937, 233-44.
• ‘The Development of Muhammad’s Teaching and Prophetic Consciousness’, School of Oriental Studies Bulletin, Cairo, June 1935, 1-9.
• ‘The Beginnings of Muhammad’s Religious Activity’, Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society, vii (1934-5), 16-24.
• ‘The Sacrifice of Ishmael’, ibid. x. 29-31.
• ‘The Style of the quran QurŸån’, ibid. xi (1942-4), 9-15.
• ‘Muhammad’s Knowledge of the Old Testament’, Studia Semitica et Orientalia, ii (W. B. Stevenson Festschrift), Glasgow, 1945, 1-20.

OTHER RECENT WORKS

• Michel Allard, etc.: Analyse conceptuelle du quran Coran sur cartes perforées, The Hague, 1963 (2 Vols. and cards); explained by Allard in ‘Une méthode nouvelle pour l’étude du quran quran Coran’, Studia Islamica, xv (1961), 5-21.
• Dirk Bakker: Man in the quran QurŸån, Amsterdam, 1965.
• Harris Birkeland: The Lord guideth: studies on primitive Islam, Oslo, 1956.
• Régis Blachère: Le quran Coran (Collection ‘Que sais-je?’), Paris, 1966
• Robert Brunschvig: ‘Simples remarques négatives sur le vocabulaire du quran quran Coran’, Studia Islamica, v (1956), 19-32.
• Maurice Causse: ‘Théologie de rupture et de la communauté: étude sur la vocation prophétique de Moïse dapres dŸaprès le quran quran Coran’, Revue de l’histoire et de laphilosophie religieuses, i (1964), 60-82.
• Josef Henninger: Spuren christlicker Glaubenswahrheiten im quran Koran, Schöneck, 1951.
• Toshihiko Izutsu: God and Man in the quran Koran: semantics of the quran quranic Koranic Weltansckauung, Tokyo, 1964.
• – Ethico-Religious Concepts in the quran QurŸån, Montreal, 1966.
• Arthur Jeffery: ‘The quran QurŸån as Scripture’, Muslim World, xl (1950), 41-55, 106-134, 185-206, 257-75.
• Jacques Jomier: ‘Le nom divin “rahman al-Raømån” dans le quran quran Coran’, Mélanges Louis Massignon, Damascus, 1957, ii. 361-81.
• – The Bible and the quran Koran (tr. Arbez), New York, 1964. Ilse Lichtenstadter: ‘Origin and Interpretation of some quran quranic Koranic Symbols’, Arabic and Islamic Studies in honor of Hamilton A. R. Gibb (ed. G. Makdisi), Leiden, 1965, 426-36.
• John Macdonald: ‘Joseph in the quran QurŸån and Muslim Commentary: a comparative study’, Muslim World, xlvi (1956), 113-31, 207-24.
• D. Masson: Le quran Coran et la révélation judéo-chrétienne, 2 vols., Paris, 1958.
• Julian Obermann: ‘Islamic Origins: a study in background and foundation’, The Arab Heritage, ed. N. A. Faris, Princeton, 1946, 58-120.
• Daud Rahbar: God of Justice: a study in the ethical doctrine of the quran QurŸån, Leiden, 1960.
• – ‘Reflections on the Tradition of quranic QurŸånic Exegesis’, Muslim World, lii (1962), 269-307.
• Helmer Ringgren: ‘The Conception of Faith in the quran QurŸån’, Oriens, iv (1951), 1-20.
• -‘Die Gottesfurcht im quran quran Koran’, Orientalia Suecana, iii (1954), 118-34.
• Irfan Shahid: ‘A Contribution to quran quranic Koranic Exegesis’, Arabic and Islamic Studies . . . Gibb (as above), 563-80.
• S.H. al-Shamma: The Ethical System underlying the quran QurŸån, Tübingen, 1959.

2. Problems facing the non-Muslim scholar

(a) The question of truth.

When the question is asked, ‘Is the quran QurŸån true?’ it has to be countered by another, ‘What does that question mean?’ Before we can say whether the quran QurŸån is true or not, we have to clarify our minds on the whole problem of the relationship of language to experience and more particularly to religious experience or, better, to man’s experience of life in its totality, This is a vast subject which can only be adumbrated here.

A starting-point might be a distinction between a cerebral knowledge of religious ideas and an experiential knowledge of these same ideas. This distinction is found in other fields also. A student may be taught the scientific account of the various things that happen to a man’s body when he is drunk; but, if he has lived a sheltered life, has never been slightly drunk, and has never seen a drunk man, his knowledge remains cerebral. The point is even more obvious with sexual intercourse. The person who has had no actual experience cannot from reading novels or scientific textbooks form an adequate idea of the ‘feel’ of the experience. The person without experience may have a perfect cerebral knowledge, but only experience can give experiential knowledge.

The case of religious ideas is even more complex. The ideas may sometimes deal apparently with objective external realities, sometimes with a man’s inner states. Children brought up in a community of the adherents of a religion normally acquire a cerebral knowledge of the ideas of the religion long before they have an experiential knowledge. For one thing some of the profounder experiences associated with religion come only to a few and only after the attainment of some degree of maturity. For another thing, since one cannot point to interior states as one can point to external objects like plants, a person may not always recognize in his experience the things of which he has cerebral knowledge. One day it will come with a flash of illumination that ‘This (in my present experience) is that which I have known about for years’.
Normally a person can only reach important levels of religious experience through participating in the life of the community in which he has been brought up and basing his activity on its ideas. There are exceptions, but this is the normal case. It is not easy for a person brought up in a Christian environment to appreciate the religious ideas of Islam, far less to make them the basis of a satisfactory life. The same is true for the Muslim with Christian ideas. This means that it is Christian ideas which give the Christian the best chance of attaining a richer and deeper experience, and likewise Muslim ideas the Muslim. Moreover we know that some such experience has actually been attained among both Christians and Muslims. At the same time we have no even approximately objective criterion to decide whose experience of life is richer and deeper.

One of the effects on the scholar of studying a religion other than that in which he was brought up is to produce a more sophisticated attitude in him. He no longer naively accepts words at their face value. Phrases like ‘the uncreated speech of God’ or ‘the comfort of the Holy Spirit’, he now realizes, do not mean a simple object in the way the phrase ‘that tree’ means the object at the end of the garden. Rather he has come to understand that he is primarily concerned with realities, which enter into ‘man’s experience of life as a whole’, but at which language can only imperfectly hint, From this sophisticated standpoint the scholar can regard the Christian and the Muslim as being both concerned with the same realities-beyond-language, though each uses his own system of ideas and of language to deal as best he can in his practical living with these realities. The scholar can further see that both these systems are effective for those brought up in the community based on the system; and fortunately he does not require to decide which is the more effective, since in his own practical living he must make use-perhaps in a sophisticated form-of the system of ideas in which he was brought up.

It follows from this that truth is to be regarded as belonging not to separate propositions in a book, but to a whole system of ideas as embodied in the life of a community. Because this is so there is no uncommitted standpoint from which different sets of ideas can be objectively compared. The only possible comparison is one which is linked with a decision to abandon one s own community and attach oneself to some other. Such a decision, however, comes at a relatively naive level. At the more sophisticated level of the scholar just described, he sees that the systems of ideas followed by Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and others are all true in so far as they enable human beings to have a more or less satisfactory ‘experience of life as a whole’. So far as observation can tell, none of the great systems is markedly inferior or superior to the others. Each is therefore true. In particular the quran QurŸån is in this sense true. The fact that the quranic QurŸånic conception of the unity of God appears to contradict the Christian conception of the unity of God does not imply that either system is false, nor even that either conception is false. Each conception is true in that it is part of a system which is true. In so far as some conception in a system seems to contradict the accepted teaching of science-or, that of history in so far as it is objective-that contradiction raises problems for the adherents of the system, but does not prove that the system as a whole is inferior to others. That is to say, the quranic QurŸånic assertion that the Jews did not kill Jesus does not prove that the quranic QurŸånic system as a whole is inferior to the Christian, even on the assumption that the crucifixion is an objective fact.
What then is the non-Muslim scholar doing when he studies the quranic QurŸånic system of ideas? He is not concerned with any question of ultimate truth, since that, It has been suggested, cannot be attained by man. He assumes the truth, in the relative sense just explained, of the quranic QurŸånic system of ideas. He is interested, however, in looking at these ideas in their relationships to one another, at their development over the centuries, at their place in the life of the community, and similar matters; and he also tries to express his thoughts and conclusions in ‘neutral’ language which will neither deny the truth of the ideas in the relative sense nor improperly assert their ultimate truth in some naive sense.

(b) The question of sources.

Nineteenth-century European scholars were, as we now think, excessively concerned with the attempt to discover the ‘sources’ of quranic QurŸånic statements. Modern work on this subject may be said to have begun in 1833 with the book (in German) of Abraham Geiger entitled What has Muhammad taken from Judaism? 5 Numerous other scholars entered the lists, and there was quite a battle between those who thought Judaism was the main source and those who thought it was Christianity. Some of the more recent works will be found in the list above. Since the study of sources has been objected to by Muslims, it seems worth while making some remarks of a general kind.

Firstly, the study of sources does not explain away the ideas whose sources are found, nor does it detract from their truth and validity. Shakespeare’s play of Hamlet remains a very great play even after we have found the ‘source’ from which Shakespeare derived the outline of the story. No more does our knowledge of the source tell us anything of importance about the creative processes in Shakespeare’s mind, This is admittedly not an exact parallel with the quran QurŸån, yet men have often thought that there was some divine inspiration in the work of great poets and that we can properly speak of a ‘creative’ process.
Secondly, even those who accept the doctrine that the quran QurŸån is the uncreated speech of God may properly study ‘sources’ in the sense of external influences on the thinking of the Arabs in muhammad Muøammad’s time. It is repeatedly asserted in the quran QurŸån that it is ‘an Arabic quran QurŸån’; and this implies that the quran QurŸån is not merely in the Arabic language but is also expressed in terms of the conceptions familiar to the Arabs. Thus 23.88/90 has frequently been misunderstood by European scholars because it makes statements about God in terms of the distinctively Arab conception of ijara ijåra or ‘the giving of neighbourly protection’. Again many of the ‘narratives’ of the quran QurŸån are in an allusive style which presupposes that the hearers already have some knowledge of the story.

If these two points are accepted, it will be seen that the study of sources and influences, besides being a proper one, has a moderate degree of interest. It tells us something about the spread of ideas and other cultural features in Arabia before the revelation of the quran QurŸån. We can perhaps also learn something of the general laws which cause peoples to take over certain ideas from their neighbours and to reject certain other ideas. Such matters are of interest to students of the social sciences and to like-minded general readers. Such a study of sources and influences, of course, also raises theological problems for the Muslim, or rather gives additional complexity to old problems. The doctrine of the uncreated quran QurŸån already raises the problem of the relation of the eternal and the temporal. It may be asserted that the temporal events mentioned in the quran QurŸån are eternally known to God, but this still leaves questions unanswered. How can imperfect human language represent the perfection of divine thought? If it is held that language is created by God, this seems to imply that God works through secondary causes; and the relation of these secondary causes to God who is the primary cause of all events, is but another form of the relation between the temporal and the external. Thus the problem has really only taken on another form.

The quran QurŸån has been studied and meditated on for about fourteen centuries, and much has been achieved. Yet in this strange new world of the later twentieth century when Muslims are in closer contact with devout and convinced non-Muslims than at any time since the first century of Islam, there is need for still further study of the quran QurŸån and study along new lines; and this must be undertaken by both Muslims and non-Muslims. 6

Arabic Grammar 2

Value of the original booklet for the Urdu Speaking people

The original booklet ‘Kho-laa-sa-toon-Nauh-w’ is an excellent tool to learn the basics of Arabic language with the “knowledge of how nouns, verbs and words are connected with each other and what follows them.”  The effectiveness of this tool really shines when used in conjunction with its sister-book on ‘Surf’ that is the “knowledge that describes method of constructing sentences and changes therein.”  This knowledge helped me to sail through with a Master’s Degree in Arabic from the Punjab University in 1959.

Combined use of these two booklets in their original text in Urdu is of tremendous value for those who speak Urdu, particularly the Moslems who want to learn the Arabic – the language in which the Holy Qor-aan was ‘revealed’ as we believe.  Some non-Moslems argue that Qor-aan was not a revelation by God but was written by Mohammed (The Holy Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah upon him) since it said “Inna-hoo la-qauo-lo ra-soo-lin ka-reem” (069:041).  But that argument really increases the miraculous nature of the Holy Qor-aan if its ‘alleged’ writer who never had a formal schooling knew the Arabic language so perfectly that its standard he set up fourteen centuries ago is still unsurpassed today.

The Arabic alphabets are written from the right to the left. The 29 Arabic alphabets are all included in the 36 alphabets in Urdu. Moslems teach their offspring the Holy Qor-aan from their tender ages enabling them to read it for spiritual blessings – long before they grow up to understand its meanings, teachings, interpretations and the juxtaposition of its principles and precepts. The Arabic language – with one of its unique features known as the ha-ra-kaat or aa-raab that appear on or under each pronounceable letter – is written just like the Urdu besides Persian and other middle eastern languages. Many rules of grammar of the Arabic have been incorporated in the rules of Urdu grammar.

Difficulty for English speaking-people to read and understand Arabic, Urdu and the original book

The English language has only 26 alphabets, is written from the left t the right and its words are formed with their own rules of grammar. One used to English written only in ‘capital’ or ‘small’ letters (‘upper case’ and ‘lower case’ in its on-line usage – has problems with the optical recognition of the Arabic alphabets and their varying looks in different forms and formats. For those raised in speaking and reading English, reading of the Arabic text is highly challenging. And utilizing the rules of its grammar that practically tantamount to scaling the Mount Everest for the purposes of learning the Holy Qor-aan and comprehending the spirit of its teachings is very, very difficult if not utterly impossible.

Those speaking the Arabic, Persian or Urdu and reading the Holy Qor-aan know correctly pronouncing words written in Arabic. Those who speak Urdu reap larger benefit from the original text by easy reading and simple learning of why and how the sign, sound and vowel on the last letter of Arabic word change its meanings. This is no different from the terms, phrases and abbreviations used in legal, medical or scientific circles, since all professions have their own one or two worded phrases that compact a huge amount of info which a layman might not understand even when explained in hundreds of words. And one who does not know the Arabic alphabets, vowels and derivative techniques that form words and how their formation changes a word’s meanings usually find all that pretty confusing, like the following provided in the booklet as answers.
(a) Question 88: “Whatever aa-raab is on the predecessor is also on that letter. Maa qa-bul (= the word that comes before it) is called mut-boo (= one that is followed).
(b) Question 89: taa-beh is four kinds: taa-beh naut, taa-beh a-tuf, taa-beh tao-keed and taa-beh ba-dul.
(c) Question 91. taa-be a-tuf is a taa-be in which one of the ha-roo-fay aa-te-fah comes between it and its mut-boo-ou (= one that is followed). In case of a-tuf, the taa-beh is called mau-too-f and the mut-boo-ou is called mau-too-f a-lai-hay.
(d) Question 92: ha-roo-fay aa-te-fah or ha-roo-fay utf are as follows: Ul-Waao (W, V) Ul-Faao (F/Ph) thom-ma um auo laa-kin laa bul

Translation and transliteration of the Kho-laa-sa-toon-Nauh-w

I ventured to translate and transliterate this enormously useful tool to learn the basics of the Arabic for predominantly one reason: I was asked by our Ja-maa-ut – The Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam – to do this good deed. This is not meant to be a tool for guaranteed learning of the whole of the Arabic or comprehend all meanings of the Holy Qor-aan or nuances of its teachings. -1-

At its best the usefulness of this work for an ordinary English-speaking person is limited -to get acquainted with the elementary basics of the Arabic grammar. I pray that someone may benefit from this work to start, advance and polish his knowledge of the Arabic and the resultant comprehension and utilization of the Holy Qor-aan. I also hope that this work provides incentive for some to make further contributions in this arena.

The challenges I faced in doing this transliteration and the parameters I set for myself

For this transliteration from the Arabic and the Urdu languages into the English, I have used the following guidelines – only the phonetic sounds of alphabets and vowels as customarily uses in those languages.
1. English alphabet ‘a’ with its known sound = Arabic alphabet ul-aliph.
2. English vowel ‘a’ with the sound in the American English like ‘ai’ as in bat, cat, rat = Arabic vowel na-sub or fa-ta-ha (= za-bur in Urdu) followed by alphabet ul-yaoo.
3. English vowel ‘a’ pronounced as in ball, call and tall = Arabic alphabet ul-aliph with the vowels of another aliph or aliph with the big or small mudd.
4. English alphabet ‘e’ with its known sound as in be, he, we = Arabic alphabet of “ul-yaao”
5. English vowel ‘e’ with its sound as in bet, pet, set = Arabic alphabet ul-aliph followed by alphabet ul-yaoo.
6. English alphabet ‘i’ with its known sound = Arabic alphabet of “ul-yaao’ as in REIT, receipt.
7. English vowel ‘i’ with its sounds as in bit, hit and sit = Arabic vowel kus-rah or jurr or (= zair in Urdu) followed by the Arabic vowel of sa-koon or juzm.
8. English vowel ‘i’ with its sound as in bye, cry, fry, pie and tie = Arabic alphabet of ‘a’ with a mudd followed by alphabet ‘hum-za’ with the vowel jurr or kus-rah or Urdu zair under it and followed by alphabet ul-yaoo.
9. English alphabet ‘o’ with its known sound = Arabic alphabet of “Ul-Waao”.
10. English vowel ‘o’ with its sound as in joke, pope and robe = Arabic letter ul-waa-o or Arabic vowel of dzoom-nah or ra-fa-a (= pay-sh in Urdu).
11. English vowel ‘o’ with its sound as in cob, hop, rob and sob = Arabic letter ul-aliph followed by the sound of Arabic letter ul-waa-o.
12. English vowels ‘oo’ plus the sound of letter ‘n’ as in boon, soon, typhoon = Arabic vowel of two (= double) ra-fa-a or dzoom-mah in Arabic (= ‘pay-sh’ in Urdu).
13. English vowel ‘i’ plus the sound of letter ‘n’ as bin, fin, sin and tin = Arabic vowel of two (= double) kus-rah in Arabic and ‘zair’ in Urdu.
14. English vowel ‘u’ plus the sound of letter ‘n’ as is bun, fun, pun = Arabic vowel of two (= double) fa-ta-ha in Arabic and ‘za-bur’ in Urdu.
And all above are not the total or exhaustive list of phonetically equivalents that I have used. Instead they provide a reasonable proximity to what I have tried to follow in the transliteration I have done.

The challenges I faced in doing this translation and the parameters I set for myself

A translation as its best is difficult to adequately convey the true sense the original writing intended to communicate. To do such a translation simultaneously with its transliteration posed for me a bigger challenge, and that’s why I urge any qualified linguistic in Arabic, Urdu and English languages to offer input for further improvement of this work.

Valuable Suggestions

1. It is absolutely mandatory for anyone trying to understand this book and use it effectively to first master the Arabic alphabets, vowels and the joining techniques used in the Arabic language. For example, the Arabic alphabets us-seen and ul-baao have their approximate equivalents of ‘S’ and ‘B’ in English. In Arabic those two letters are joined by placing on top of or below each letter one of several signs or symbols called fa-ta-ha, dzoom-mah, kus-ra and juzm – their actions described through na-sub, ra-fa-a, jurr and sa-koon respectively. In English, said letters “S” and “B” are read and pronounced on their own, and the methodology to link them and make them readable is to add a vowel between them like SOB or SUB. The permutation and combinations of joining their equivalents in Arabic are enormous, some of them being as follows.
(a) Us-seen and ul-baao without a vowel may not be read or pronounced at all.
(b) Us-seen and ul-baao with the action of na-sub (sign of fa-ta-ha) is read and pronounced as ‘sa’ and ‘ba’.
(c) Us-seen and ul-baao with the action of ra-fa-a (sign of dzoom-mah) is read and pronounced as ‘so’ and ‘bo’. -2-
(d) Us-seen and bl-baao with the action of jurr (sign of kus-ra) is read and pronounced as ‘se’ and ‘be’.
(e) Us-seen or ul-baao with the action of sa-koon (sign of juzm) is read with the sound of the prior letter merging or coming into a stop or dead-end in it – very similar to the result of English vowels ‘I’ and ‘U’ between two consonants like ‘SIB’ or ‘SUB’.
(f) Us-seen with the action of na-sub (sign of fa-ta-ha) and ul-baao with the sign of sa-koon (sign of juzm) will make it readable with the sound of the ‘S’ practically coming into a stop or dead-end in ‘B’. The result will be very close to the word being read and pronounced as ‘SUB’.
(g) Us-seen with the action of ra-fa-a (sign of dzoom-mah) and ul-baao with the sign of sa-koon (sign of juzm) will make it readable with the sound of the letter ‘S’ as if it were followed by ‘O’ or ‘OO’ resulting in the word being read and pronounced like SOB or SOON.
(h) Us-seen with the action of jurr (sign of kus-rah) and ul-baao with the sign of sa-koon (sign of Juzm) will make it readable with the sound of the ‘S’ as if it were followed by ‘E’ resulting in the word sounding like BET, PET.
And all that is regarding the transliteration, while the translating of the Arabic into one’s own language that comes much later is an entirely different ball game.

2. The book kho-laa-sa-toon-nah-w has at times focused on the vowel that comes on the last letter of an Arabic word, and how that vowel changes the format, pronunciation and meanings of that word. The English language punctuation like a stop, comma, parentheses, inverted commas, colon, semi-colon, hyphens are not per se in the Arabic language, but have to be developed by several techniques. So anyone studying a grammar book for the Arabic like the kho-laa-sa-toon-nah-w should have already learnt the vowels in English language are a, e, i , o, u and y, and that they also have their own sounds in pronouncing a word, but those in the Arabic have different characteristics and effects.
(a) Number: They are much greater in number.
(b) Sounds: They give specific sound to a letter on or under which they appear, but have no sound of their own like in English where alphabets vowels are also pronounced as consonants.
(c) Meanings: They have no sound or meanings in themselves.
(d) Effects on meanings of other words: They change the meanings of a word, often tremendously when appearing on or below the last letter of a word.
(e) Silence: A letter without any vowel on or under it is silent, not pronounced, except when ending with the Alif, Wao and Yay.

3. The original booklet frequently uses Arabic vowels and presumes that the student knows how and where they are written and how they are pronounced. But a starter must learn the Arabic aa-raa-b or vowels as following.
(a) Ra-fa-a is close to being the equivalent of ‘o’ in English, and must be pronounced as ‘oo’ if followed by the alphabet ‘ul-waao’. A letter that has a ra-fa-aa on top of it is called mur-foo-u. The sign for ra-faa-a is called dzoom-mah and the letter with dzoom-mah on top of it is called mudz-moom. The sound and pronunciation of the letter turns into ‘oon’ when there are two (= double) dzoom-ma on top the last letter that ends the word.
(b) Na-sub is close to being equivalent of ‘a’ in English, and must be pronounced as ‘aa’ if followed by the alphabet ‘aliph’. A letter that has a na-sub on top of it is called mun-soob. The sign for na-sub is called fa-ta-ha and the letter with fa-ta-ha on top of it is called muf-tooh. The sound and pronunciation of the letter turns into ‘un’ when there are two (= double) fa-ta-ha on top of the last letter that ends the word.
(c) Jurr is close to being equivalent of ‘e’ in English, and must be pronounced as ‘ee’ if followed by the alphabet ‘ul-yaao’. A letter that has a jurr under it is called muj-roor. The sign for jurr is called kus-ra and the letter with a kus-ra under it is called muk-soor. The sound and pronunciation of the letter turns into ‘in’ when two (= double) kus-ra are under the last letter that ends the word. The word jurr is different from that in a hur-fay jaar which changes any vowel on a word’s last letter to a kus-rah when immediately preceding it. Ha-roo-fay-jar is plural for the singular hur-fay jaar
(d) Sa-koon has no real equivalent in English language, but the nearest effect can be illustrated as in bit, cut or set. The sound of the former letter dead-ends in the subsequent letter with a full-stop. Sa-koon shown by the symbol ‘ ^ ’ appears on top of the letter in which the previous letters dead-ends or comes to a stop.
(e) Shudd is a symbol that comes on top of a letter and has the effect of doubling the sound and pronunciation of the leter on which it comes. Nearest example in English is letter W being equivalent of VV, to wit, two V’s. -3-

4. Placing vowel in Arabic is crucial to understanding true meanings of a word, phrase and sentence. The differences that ensue have developed huge controversies, debates and interpretation of the religious scriptures including the Holy Qor-aan. This phenomenon reminds me of an actual personal story I’ve told often in the Arabic and the Holy Qor-aan classes I have taught over the years. One of my Afro-American friends returned to a US Midwest town after visiting a mosque on the East Coast and cheerfully greeted me saying us-sa-laamo-alai-kay. Noticing his mistake, I asked him to call a 10/11-years-old Afro-American kid who was playing nearby. When the boy came near us, I asked him, “Are you a girl or a boy”, and he rather indignantly replied, “Can’t you see I’m a boy?” I then asked him, “What would you do if someone called you a girl?” He signaled with his fist and showed with his gesture that he would give him a punch. At that time I turned to my friend and asked him, “Do you see what happens if you say to a man us-sa-laamo-alai-kay that’s used to greet a woman instead of us-sa-laamo-alai-ka that’s used to greet a man?” He apologized thinking he had unwittingly insulted me. I assured him that he had not offended me, and that I had taken the opportunity to add to his knowledge of the Arabic by making this strong characteristic of the Arabic language crystal clear to him.

September 21, 2007                                       Abid A. Buttar, Attorney at Law