Muhammad a Prophet For all Humanity
15. The Qur’an—The Prophet’s Miracle
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The impact that the Qur’an has had on Arabic is like
that of a writer who produces a work of
unsurpassable literary excellence at the very
beginning of a language’s history. After such a
figure has made his mark, no lesser writer can
change the face of the language. The Qur’an was
revealed in the Arabic current at the time, casting it
in a more elevated literary mould than had ever
been seen before or afterwards.
By making vital additions to traditional modes of
expression, the Qur’an opened the way for
expansion of the Arabic language. The use of word
“One”
(ahad)
in the 112th chapter of the Qur’an,
entitled “The Unity,” is a good example. Previously
it had been used in the genitive to express “one of
us” for example, or for the “first day’ of the week,
Saturday or
Yawm al-Ahad.
It was used for general
negations, as in
maja’ni ahadun—”no
one came to see
me.” But in using
ahad
as an attribute of Almighty
God, the Qur’an put the word to an entirely novel
use. The Qur’an brought many foreign words into
Arabic usage, for instance
istabraq
from Persian,
qaswarah
from Abyssinian,
sirat
from Greek,
yamm
from Syrian,
ghassaq
from Turkish,
qistas
from Latin,
