Muhammad a Prophet For all Humanity
15. The Qur’an—The Prophet’s Miracle
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who save God—who knows the future just as He
knows the past—could know that prose rather
than poetry should be chosen as the medium for
divine scripture that was to last for all time. The
Qur’an was addressed to future generations, and
soon poetry was going to become less important
as a mass medium of communication. Rhetorical
language was also very much in vogue before the
Qur’an, but for the first time in literary history,
the Qur’an introduced a factual rather than
rhetorical style. The most famous topics for
literary treatment had previously been military
and romantic exploits. The Qur’an, on the
contrary, featured a much wider spectrum,
including matters of ethical, legal, scientific,
psychological, economic, political and historic
significance within its scope. In ancient times,
parables were a popular mode of expression. Here
too, the Qur’an trod new ground, adopting a more
direct method of saying things. The method of
reasoning employed in the Qur’an was also
considerably different from that used in pre-
Quranic times. Whereas purely theoretical,
analogical proof was all that the world had known
prior to this the Qur’an introduced empirical,
