The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
The Qur’an —The Prophet’s Miracle
~ 73 ~
tribes who spoke such varying dialects should have
initiated a fresh process of change in the Arabic
language, but this was not to be. The supreme
eloquence of the language of the Qur’an guarded
Arabic from any such transformation. What
happened instead has been explained by Dr.
Ahmad Hasan Zayyat:
“After the coming of Islam, the Arabic
language did not remain the monopoly of one
nation. It became the language of all those
who entered the faith.”
Then these Arab Muslims left their native land,
conquering territory extending from Kashghar in
the east to Gibraltar in the west. Persian, Qibti,
Berber, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Aramaic and Suryani
were among the languages spoken by the peoples
they came into contact with. Some of these nations
were politically and culturally more advanced than
the Arabs. Iraq, bastion of an ancient civilization
and the cultural centre of major tribes, was one of
the countries they entered. They mingled with the
Iranians, masters of one of the world’s two great
empires. The highly advanced Roman civilization,