Muhammad a Prophet For all Humanity
15. The Qur’an—The Prophet’s Miracle
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and Semitic civilizations, Arabic language and
culture faced a new crisis. The grandsons of the
emperors and lords of Persia arose to resurrect the
civilization of their forefathers.
These events had a profound effect on the Arabic
language. The state that it had reached by the time
of the poet Mutanabbi (A.D. 915-965) is expressed in
the following lines:
The buildings of Iran excel all others in
beauty. As the season of spring excels all
other seasons. An Arab youth goes amongst
them, His face, his hands, his tongue, a
stranger in their midst. Solomon, they say,
used to converse with the jinns, but were he
to visit the Iranians, he would need a
translator.
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It was the Qur’an’s literary greatness alone, which
kept Arabic from being permanently scarred by
these upheavals. The language always returned to
its Qur’anic base, like a ship which, after
weathering temporary storms on the high seas,
returns to the safety of its harbour.
