Some years ago I worked on the historical origins of Islam, attempting to show that it arose from its time and place and was a product of its circumstances - i.e. Muhammad created it. I still need to finish that, but I don't really have anywhere to put the text. A few days ago, I don't know what possessed me, but I kind of looked up the "Inimitability of the Qur'an" i'jaz al-Qur'an - the idea that the Qur'an is the best thing ever produced. I found a really informative article for free on jstor: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4183221?seq=1 (you can register with Google and read 100 articles for free per month). Last night I worked on it till 6 am (only to wake up at 7:30am for work, even though I had a long nap yesterday afternoon), I really got into it.
There's only like 1 Muslim apologist who even knows of the article above by Devin J. Stewart - Hamza Tzortzis - and he cites the one or two places it seems to praise it as unique (it's only unique in the sense that it's deficient). Anyway, I wanted to give you guys a read over what I wrote. I know there's two books I reference very incompletely, whose citations are buried somewhere in my notes. Also there's two books Stewart mentions that I want to go to for further information (a 19th century examination of style by Noldeke, and another more recent one by a Muslim scholar, who cites Westerners I believe). But Stewart did such amazing and on-point work, a rough draft was possible almost entirely from his information.
I tried presenting this article to some clergy at a local community. But aside from indifference, someone actually called it "hateful and vile," probably because I didn't dance around the issue enough, and essentially told me to get away with it from there because it was the opposite of bridge-building (they didn't really like me there to begin with, more obscurity than dislike).
I am welcoming all criticism without argument. And if anyone wants to copy it, feel free: if it's worth anything, I'd prefer the contents get spread. Because Devin J. Stewart hints and dances around the fact that the Qur'an is by no means inimitable, and there isn't really that much in-depth information on its style. He wrote that in 1990, and he was devoid of a lot of Western scholarship on the issue - most of his references are to Medieval Arabic rhetoricians. Goes to show you how obsessed the critics have been with the Bible
So anyway, please give me some thoughts :) :
Qur'anic Literary Structure
One of the main claims specific to Islam is that the Qur'an is superbly eloquent and unmatched by literature before or since. This doctrine, i'jaz al-Qur'an, is espoused by the Qur'an itself, where Muhammad challenges his critics to "produce one chapter like it," if they were right that he's lying about it being genuine revelations, resulting in the doctrine staunchly defended since Medieval times.
However, this claim is not based on aesthetics. No Muslim scholar compares it to Shakespeare or Milton. The criteria seems to oscillate between "importance of message" and, on a more technically-minded level: originality in literary type. Most religions concern themselves with the important topics of the origin and destiny of man, so the former aspect is neither unique nor possibly specific enough by its necessarily general and, without supporting evidence, unverifiable nature. Much can become important to someone if it touches them in a way they can relate: books, art, personal relationships. It's the second idea, more emphasized for its more specific nature, that I want to consider.
Claims of Qur'anic Uniqueness of Style
- Is its own genre: other writings follow specific rules for poetry or prose, but the Qur'an can't be grouped into these
- Cannot be imitated better: the Medieval Arabs held it as the best example of literature
- Eloquent: "It is almost impossible for the listener to detect the shift from one form [of metrical structure in a verse] to the other, nor does this exquisite mingling impinge on the fluidity of expression or impair its meaning." [Mitwalli al-Sharawi, The Miracles of the Qur’an. Dar ul Taqwa, p. 32]
GENRE
Saj
Saj is possibly the earliest beginnings of Arabic poetry. Simple prose was predated by poetry in many cultures, including Greece where prior to Herodotus, poets and historians were synonymous (e.g. Simonides in the 5th century BC), for the same reason that we don't like reading books as much as movies: it can get boring.
But saj is not strictly poetry. It doesn't have to follow any meter at all, unlike its more developed cousin, rajaz. Essentially saj is two or more lines (no real limit) that end in a rhyme, which has to have the last syllable stressed. As long as the two lines aren't extremely different in length (though this happens a lot in saj including in the Qur'an), it's ok if one of the lines (called sajah; plural saja'at) is a bit (or more than a bit) longer. It's neither prose, nor poetry, and even the definition of "rhymed and rhythmic prose" isn't good enough for Stewart.
The later Muslim rules of poetry, maqamat, do not allow saj to conform in it: if anything, it's saj that's the unique literary genre, not the Qur'an: "Arabic's second poetry" [p.134]
"Arabic composition should be divided into three categories, prose, verse and Qur’an, saj’ forming a part of prose but the Qur’an being a category of its own." [Hussein, Taha. Saj’ in English Renditions of the Qur’an: A Close Reading of Surah 93 (al-Duha) and the basmala, p.64]
Contrary to the claim of a unique genre, the Qur'an has saj. Not just a little: almost entirely: 85.9%. [Stewart, Devin J. “Sajʿ in the ‘Qurʾān’: Prosody and Structure.” Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 21, no. 2, 1990, p.108] This earliest of Arabic literature was denied by some of the Medieval critics as being in the Qur'an for its primitiveness. Its undeveloped character is illustrated by the etymology of the word "saj": supposedly the sound doves made, where their cooing sounded similar but had no content. [Stewart, p.105]
It's not so much that saj can have no meaning or organized, logical content. However, the diviners and soothsayers of pre-Islamic Arabia, so frequently chastised by the Qur'an, Hadith, and earliest Muslims starting with Muhammad, frequently employed such "meaningless" and mysterious saj such as:
"The sky and the earth,
the loan and the debt,
the flood and the trickle"
the loan and the debt,
the flood and the trickle"
This connection between saj and the Arabian soothsayers, or kahins, is probably the main reason some of the later Muslim commentators denied its presence in the Qur'an. The episode where the guardian of a woman who fought a pregnant woman and caused a premature abortion defends her by employing rhyming saj and is chastised for it shows this. [Stewart, p.104]
But as Stewart notes, "it is wrong to impose existing conventions on the material, whether they be Arabic-Muslim or Western Orientalist, for this can only advance our understanding in a limited fashion...Is it not more fruitful to take the doctrine of i'jaz [Marvel, i.e. of the Qur'an] as a challenge to investigation and comparison rather than a declaration of the futility of independent thinking? Did not the greatest Muslim literary critics do just that?" [pp.107-8]
Al-Taftazani's [d. 791/1389] statements show just that: one doesn't refer to the Qur'an as saj, not because it isn't saj, but out of respect [Stewart, p.107]. So we see that since Medieval times the Qur'an was known to be pretty much all saj and other lines that are just statements or prose (no poetic structure, except rarely as dividers, "refrain ayah" - between saj units - Stewart, p.128). Hence Stewart concludes (pp.108, 133):
"It is not surprising that the medieval critics who so plainly recognize Qur'anic saj' as such are those who have produced the best analyses of saj' that have come down to us...Notwithstanding considerable reluctance to use the term saj' in reference to the Qur'an, most medieval rhetoricians realize that the Qur'an contains a great deal of saj'."
And a mixture of "poetry and prose" does not make a unique genre, anymore than a mixture of fluid and non-fluid makes a different state of matter. This is simply grasping at straws for uniqueness. If anything, the Gospels have a bigger claim on this, where sometimes Mark is considered to have invented the genre of the Gospel, but these were also quite clearly modelled on the ancient Greco-Roman bioi or "lives of illustrious men" genre, prevalent at the time.
INIMITABILITY
The earliest Muslim rhetoricians were neither uniform nor unbiased. Not to mention the parameters of saj are so loose, that they're close to nonexistent at times. Clearly not everyone could have considered the Qur'an inimitable objectively. Ibn Athir's criteria for the best saj is 2-3 sajahs of equal length [p.124], which is very frequently not the case in the Qur'an.
Saj and RulesSubjective Criteria
For the Arabs of Muhammad's day, merely employing saj was eloquent. [Stewart, p.103] Al-Rummani (d. 384/994) considered the content to determine the eloquence, not the style. [Stewart, p.105] This isn't a mark against the Qur'an. Edith Hamilton notes that the Gothic sculptures and buildings of the Middle Ages were far superior in elegance, intricacy, and mastery than the ancient Greek ones, but because the Greek came first and developed the art, they were in that sense superior: like Newton's comment about standing on the shoulders of giants.
But if one tries to look at it technically the way the Muslim inimitability argument goes, then it's clearly subjective: the content can revolutionize for its day, but many movies whose story we consider redundant and special effects comical today were new and amazing back in their day.
In fact, the whole challenge Muhammad gave to the Meccan scoffer, to produce one chapter like the Qur'an if it's so easy, was a genuine challenge not because the Qur'an was such a literary miracle, but because most of them didn't have a lick of education! In fact, Muslims frequently mention how in Mecca there were only 17 people who could read and write, implying Muhammad couldn't have learned any biblical stories from them to write the Qur'an. [he learned them from Syrians he traded with during the bi-annual caravan trades he'd been doing for years prior. there are numerous stories of his being given shelter and clothes by Nestorian monks. This is how one of his "miracles" took place - describing Jerusalem in detail as if looking at (an invisible) map of it in front of people]
The Muslim rhetoricians simply don't agree whether saj is okay when properly employed, employed moderately, or if the whole is utter nonsense no matter what. Even the rules for saj, loose as they are, completely differ between them. Al-Athir considers a sajah (one of the lines ending in a rhyme of a saj unit) that exceeds the length of another sajah by too much to be imbalanced; Al-Qazwini doesn't because Surah 103 and 93.1-3 does it. [Stewart pp.126-7] Al-Athir says it's best if all the saja'at are the same length, but noting Surah 56.28-30, says it would be ok if the last sajah in verse 30 was 3-4 words longer; if the first two saja'at are 3-4 words, the third could be 10-11 words, contradicting himself. [Stewart, p.126]
Bias
The problem of concluding that the Qur'an is inimitable is that the starting point for the theory's proponents is always that the Qur'an is the model literature. For example, on the maximum number of words in each sajah, Al-Qalqashandi concludes that it is 19 because that's the biggest number of words found in a Qur'anic sajah - Surah 8.43-4. [Stewart, p.119] That's like asking the magic mirror on the wall, "Who's the prettiest of them all?" and giving yourself as the epitome of beauty: with such guidelines every mirror becomes your answer!
The final rhyme in saj is called either a fawasil - if it places content over superficial pleasing sound like rhyme - or asja if it does the opposite. Naturally, they automatically consider every such end-rhyme in the Qur'an a fawasil [Stewart, pp.106,120] to the point where they only refer to it as fawasil, even though "there are many examples of the use of formal devices in the Qur'an where the meaning is somewhat subordinated for aesthetic or rhetorical reasons." [Stewart, p.106]
Many saj in the Qur'an are of different lengths - Al-Taftazani explains that it's improper per Al-Qazwini's statement if it were "much shorter/longer" to avoid the criticism of the Qur'anic saj. [Stewart, p.117]
Stewart notes that, e.g. Surah 2.281-3 has three ayat (verses) with wordcounts: 15, 127, and 32 respectively, which rhyme at the end. The bias is shown by Al-Qalqashandi who cites Surah 8.43-4 as the highest number of words in a saj, and that more than this is not saj: (1) to preserve the eloquence in the Qur'an seeing the abberations in 2.281-3, (2) to set the Qur'an as the standard of eloquence (alongside the arbitrary reasoning like #1), and then judge it perfect by judging it by itself! [Stewart, pp.119-120]
Uniqueness
Uniqueness by itself is relevant only in the proper context. Everyone's fingerprint is unique for no special reason. On a minute enough level, all mistakes are unique. This is what the famous quote from Heraclitus means, "No man steps in the same river twice": the water molecules are different the second time.
Aside genre, the literary style of the Qur'an is presented as unique. Let's ignore the fact that the Qur'an itself says it's for Arabs in "plain Arabic speech." This might seem at first like it's only saying that it's in non-fancy language - unpretentious, without jargon. But the implication is that it's not a soothsayer's speech, which we've seen it can't really be so certain with its emphasis on saj.
But the few features that can be pointed to merely differ from the main style of saj. Stewart writes that the Qur'an is "more saj than not." [p.109] The rhymes are usually one syllable [pp.110-1], and these are common endings that allow irregular rhymes which frequently occur.
Other stylistic rhetorical devices are the "refrain" ayah. Also verses that have more than one sajah each (Surah 69.30; 112:3). But these are rare [pp.126, 128], so hardly the mark of a master stylist.
Many could employ saj, not just the Qur'an or the kahins. Al-Jahiz reports an anecdote about a man who only spoke in saj: not just rhymes, but also regular meter, unlike the Qur'an which is frequently not in meter. To tout the break from meter as a relevant uniqueness is like saying the random splashes of paint I throw on a canvass are as descriptive as a photograph: certainly not in any objective sense. So when Abdulla el Tayib calls the Qur'an's style "beyond probing," he's certainly right but not in the sense he means.
A good question is why the Qur'an didn't use rajaz, which had meter and could also vary its rhymes? Surely that would prove the inimitability, while also being even more pleasing to the ear!
ELOQUENCE
There are already some hints of not only non-eloquence, but deficient style above. Here I'll give some fuller details.
Mono-rhyming was considered dull ("repetitive and stilted" - p.121) by the Medieval Islamic authorities. Yet, in many places the end rhyme is the same for over 50 Qur'anic lines! [p.123] These form different units throughout, showing it's easy to rhyme but not easy to keep the same meter as your topic is developed/changed: "Another extremely common device for separating saj' units is change in the length of the saj'ahs without change in the rhyme. That this is much more common in the Qur'an than in other saj' compositions such as maqamat is another aspect of the tendency to maintain mono-rhyme." [p.128 - and he cites Surah 114]
Inexact rhymes and rhymes unallowed in poetry or saj. [p.109] And the medieval Muslim rhetoricians' claim that all of the rhyme-types are either exact or inexact, as if that was something special, in the Qur'an is also incorrect. [p.109] This just gives the impression that the text is mix-and-match patchwork and that the author didn't know the rules or was bad at them - would God write like this? Stewart concludes on this:
"Qur'anic saj' has a much greater tendency to mono-rhyme than does later saj'. A small number of rhymes, including un/in/um/im and il/ir, are predominant in the Qur'an whereas rhyme in later saj' shows greater variation. The Qur'an allows inexact rhymes which are not found in later saj'. The saj'ahs in Qur'anic saj' are in many cases much longer than those found in later saj', though the shorter Meccan surahs tend to have fairly short saj'ahs. Saj' units in the Qur'an reach much greater lengths than those found in later saj'. The formation of saj' units in Qur'anic saj' also exhibits a greater degree of variety...units of the ruba'i type [short, short, very long sajah] and the pyramid type [short, medium, long] being much more common. Later saj' tends to consist primarily of parallelism and multiple rhymes become much more important effects...than they are in the Qur'an" [pp.133-4]
The balance that Al-Athir and others propose is frequently broken (e.g. Surah 2.281-3: wordcount is 15, 127, 32 respectively).
Stewart calls the surah more "flexible" than the qasidah (which had same meter and rhyme throughout) [p.120], but that just strikes one given the above as another way of saying "less capable". Though not mono-rhyme, sometimes the Qur'an just doesn't bother with any symmetry. For example, Surah 110 has 4 rhymes in 11 verses. It just comes off as an artificial attempt: the saj change by changing the rhyme and word length, yet the final sajah is five words and no rhyme. [p.127] So either there are no rules and we're freestyling it (hence how can we claim inimitability when we're comparing random things?), or the Qur'an is deficient in its poetry - this clearly violates the already infinitely loose rules of saj! If one wants to cite this as an example of uniqueness and difference from other genres like saj, then one is simply claiming that a collection of purpose-oriented sentences are their own unique style. That's not a unique genre, that's simply no genre: like a long announcement or flier.
Because of all this, Al-Khalil's standards and later maqamat (Arabic rules for poetry) clearly do not even consider the Qur'an as poetry. [p.134] Many could not do this analysis due to the doctrine of i'jaz al-Qur'an, and led to various machinations of definitions (e.g. Ibn Athir's 'accent poetry'), so the "supremacy of quantitative poetry" [over the saj such as the Qur'an's] - could not be stated. [p.134]
"[Q]uantitative parallelism is restricted to the last word...However, critics prized more complete parallelism, and considered saj of even higher merit if it had this property" [p.131] This is why Stewart notes that:
"Scheindlin believes that this type of saj', as used by al-Hamadhani and al-Hariri, is the most advanced stage of saj' in the history of Arabic literature. It is clear that many medieval rhetoricians and writers of saj' shared his opinion." [p.132][For Scheindlin's opinion, his Form and Structure in the Poetry of al Mu'tamid Ibn 'Abbad, p.58]
"Critics pay a great deal of attention to the last word of the saj'ah...Not only is it important for the word to have rhyme (qafiyah), it is also considered important that the fasilah [last word which rhymes] be of the same morphological pattern (wazn) as those of neighboring saj'ahs. Medieval critics classify saj' according to the presence or absence of this property." [p.129]
"Although waqaran and atwaran rhyme, they are not of the same morphological pattern. As regards syllabic quantity, waqaran scans short-long-long, but atwaran scans long-long-long. The critics consider this type of saj' inferior to saj' mutawazi 'parallel saj'', which has both rhyme and identical pattern in the final words of the saj'ahs." [p.129]
If there was ever a chance to objectively impress with style, it was here. And it falls flat. There must have been a good reason for the medieval rhetoricians to consider those kinds of rhymes "skewed", especially writing hundreds of years after the Qur'an with Qur'anic verses in mind. Of course, they defend the Qur'an, considering the above simply something that "deviates...from the norm". [p.130]
There's other types of style found in the Qur'an considered deficient by some. Muwazanah was essentially saj' with proper morphological form but with either no rhyme or inexact rhymes at the end:
"Others, such as al-Askari, do not consider it saj', but deem it slightly inferior saj' in literary merit. Al-Qalqashandi and others give the following Qur'anic example: [Surah 88.15-16]" [p.130]
Other times, the style is arbitrary: the number of lines in each "strophe" in Chapter 54 varies from 5-11, as well as the words (4-10 words). [pp.128-9] This is not uniqueness, but randomness.
Most of the Qur'anic saj is two ayat (verses) [p.117], which again confirms its simple and non-unique character to me. The introductory phrase (sometimes part of a line was not part of the sajah) can be of very different lengths - p.117 (Sheynin quote). - this introductory phrase ("matla") is part of the "irregular" thing Muslims will cite, but it's not unique to the Qur'an, and also shows that saj is just an irregular rhyme. Stewart notes it distinguishes it from poetry - it's like half-baked poetry, honestly. He says the matlas typically one or two words, but that's already a number of syllables. Sometimes the matla is as long as the following sajah (p.118 - Surah 112.1-2). He notes that no matla exceeded the size of the following sajah because it would upset the metrical balance - something no one would simply invent, not that the Qur'an is special. Later writers used almost exclusively 2-4 sajahs, mostly 2. [p.122] More than 4 sajahs is strained per Al-Askari, yet the Qur'an has 5 (Surah 111), and in one case 14! (Surah 81.1-14) "...without any clear subdivisions..." [Stewart, p.123]
Cultural Milieu of the Qur'an
Here I just point out some additional supporting points that don't really belong up there, but that contribute to the idea that the Qur'an is a product of its time:
- Saj was immediately criticized and recognized as kahin-like (pp.102-4), and these were the Meccan accusations, aside from saying he invented it and heard stories from Jews and Christians.
- The saj of the kahins was stilted and unnatural (p.104). Numerous Qur'anic parallels (trades meaning for rhyme; bad rhymes)
- No difference between the kahins and other saj except for the message's point. [p.105]
- Many places the Qur'an subordinates the meaning to form, like the kahins. [p.106]
- The random way the saj rules set out by Al-Athir et al (based on balance - pp.125 and on) are broken by the Qur'an shows an arbitrary literary nature unbecoming of God. Just as Muslims contend that only the Arabic captures the true eloquence, so also one should judge it by its cultural milieu: so if it broke the rules of its day, then even if we can justify it to our ears, it's either ineloquent or incapable.
- Al-Isba says of Surah 55.33-6 like having two meters simultaneously, clearly showing the arbitrariness of the medieval Arab rhetoricians, Saj itself, and the Qur'an - because it's not a common device in it. [p.128]
- Muhammad immediately associates saj with kahins, to eliminate competition (Musaylimah the Liar; the guardian defending the woman who caused an abortion). [Stewart, p.104]