The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
The Qur’an —The Prophet’s Miracle
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and an expanding Christian religion, were two of
the forces that they clashed with. Among the
countries they occupied was Syria, where
Phoenician, Ghassanid, Greek, Egyptian and
Cana’anian tribes had left behind outstanding
traditions in literature and ethics. Then there was
Egypt, the meeting place of oriental and occidental
philosophy. These factors were more than enough
to transform the Arabic language, as had been the
case with other tongues exposed to similar forces.
But they were rendered ineffective by the Qur’an, a
specimen of such unrivalled literary excellence that
no power could weaken the hold of the language in
which it had been written.
With the conquests of Islam, Arabic no longer
belonged to one people alone; it became the
language of several nations and races. When the
‘Ajamis, (non-Arabs) of Asia and Africa accepted
Islam, they gradually adopted Arabic as their
language. Naturally, these new converts were not as
proficient in speaking the language as the Arabs of
old. Then the Arabs in their turn were affected by
the language spoken by their new co-religionists.
The deterioration of Arabic was especially evident
