The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
The Qur’an —The Prophet’s Miracle
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Intonation and accent varied from tribe to tribe. So
much so that Abu ‘Amr ibn al-ula was moved to
remark that the ‘Himyar tribe do not speak our
language; their vocabulary is quite different from
ours.’ ‘Umar ibn Khattab once brought before the
Prophet an Arab whom he had heard reciting the
Qur’an. The Arab had been pronouncing the words
of the Qur’an in such a strange manner that ‘Umar
was unable to make out what part of the Book of
God he was reading. The Prophet once spoke to a
visiting delegation from some Arab tribe in their
own dialect. It seemed to ‘Ali as if the Prophet was
speaking in a foreign tongue.
The main reason for this difference was variation in
accent. For instance, the Banu Tameem, who lived
in the eastern part of Najd, were unable to say the
letter ‘j’ (Jim) and used to pronounce it as ‘y’ (Ye)
instead. The word for mosque (masjid), they used to
pronounce ‘masyid’, and instead of’ shajarat’
(trees), they would say ‘sharat’.
‘Q’
(Qaaf) they
pronounced as ‘j’, (Jim) calling a ‘tareeq’ (road) a
‘tareej, a ‘sadiq’ (friend) a ‘sadij, ‘qadr’ (value) ‘jadr’
and ‘qasim’ (distributor) ‘jasim’. According to
normal linguistic patterns, the coming together of
