The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
The Qur’an —The Prophet’s Miracle
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foreign words into Arabic usage, for instance
istabraq
from Persian,
qaswara
from Abyssinian,
sirat
from
Greek, ‘yamm’
from Syrian,
ghassaq
from
Turkish,
qistas
from Latin,
‘malakut’
from Armaic
and
‘kafoor’
from Hindi. The Qur’an tells us (25:60)
that the idolators of Mecca were baffled at the word
‘rahman’. They used to say ‘What is this ‘rahman’?
This is because the word was not Arabic: it has been
taken from the Sabean and Hamiri languages. The
Christians of Yemen and Abyssinia used to call God
‘rahamnan’.
The Meccans considered the word
foreign when it appeared in the Qur’an in an
Arabicized form. They enquired what
‘rahman’
meant, being unaware of its linguistic background.
Over one hundred non-Arabic words of this nature
were used in the Qur’an, taken from languages as
far apart as Persian, Latin, Nabataean, Hebrew,
Syrian, Coptic and many others.
Although the Qur’an was revealed mainly in the
language of the Quraysh, words used by other Arab
tribes were also included. Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas, a
Qurayshi Muslim, was puzzled when the word
fatir
appeared in the Qur’an. ‘I did not know what the
expression ‘Originator of the heavens and the earth’
