Muhammad a Prophet For all Humanity
15. The Qur’an—The Prophet’s Miracle
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the forces that they clashed with. Among the
countries they occupied was Syria, where
Phoenician, Ghassanid, Greek, Egyptian and
Cana’anian tribes had left behind outstanding
traditions in literature and ethics. Then there was
Egypt, the meeting place of oriental and occidental
philosophy. These factors were more than enough
to transform the Arabic language, as had been the
case with other tongues exposed to similar forces.
But they were rendered ineffective by the Qur’an, a
specimen of such unrivalled literary excellence that
no power could shake the language in which it had
been written.
With the conquests of Islam, Arabic no longer
belonged to one people alone; it became the
language of several nations and races. When the
“ajamis’
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of Asia and Africa accepted Islam, they
gradually adopted Arabic as their language.
Naturally, these new converts were not as proficient
in speaking the language as the Arabs of old. Then
the Arabs in their turn were affected by the
language spoken by their new co-religionists. The
deterioration of Arabic was especially evident in
large, cosmopolitan cities, where there was more
