Muhammad a Prophet For all Humanity
15. The Qur’an—The Prophet’s Miracle
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strong enough to inflict any permanent scar on the
face of Arabic. Fierce attacks were launched on
Arabic language and literature by the Tartars in
Bukhara and Baghdad, by the Crusaders in Palestine
and Syria, then by other Europeans in Andalusia.
According to the history of other languages, these
assaults on Arab culture should have been sufficient
to eradicate the Arabic language completely. One
would have expected Arabic to have followed the
path of other languages and merged with other
Semitic tongues. Indeed, it would be true to say that
if Arabic had not come up against Turkish ignorance
and Persian prejudice, it would be spoken
throughout the Muslim world today. Still, its very
survival in the Arab world was due solely to the
miraculous effect of the Qur’an. The greatness of the
Qur’an compelled people to remain attached to
Arabic. It inspired some Arab scholars—Ibn Manzur
(A.H. 630-711) and Ibn Khaldun (A.H. 732-808) being
two that spring to mind—to produce, in defiance of
the government of the day, works of great literary
and academic excellence.
Napoleon’s entry into Cairo (1798) ushered in the
age of the printing press in the Middle East.
