al-Shuʿarāʾ 26:196-199

Wa innahu la-fī zuburi'l-awwalīn · A-wa lam yakun lahum āyatan an yaʿlamahu ʿulamāʾu banī Isrāʾīl · Wa law nazzalnāhu ʿalā baʿḍi'l-aʿjamīn · Fa-qaraʾahu ʿalayhim mā kānū bihi muʾminīn

"It is surely in the scriptures of those who came before. · Is it not a sign for them that the learned of the Children of Israel know it? · Had We sent it down upon one of the non-Arabic speakers · and had he recited it to them, they would still not have believed in it."

The root ز-ب-ر: the core the lexicographers give is to make firm, to build by laying stone upon stone (zabartu'l-biʾr — I lined the well with stone). And from there it passes to the sense of "to write": zabūr — what is written, a book. Zubur is its plural.

The link the lexicographers make is this: writing too is a kind of building — it is set out letter by letter, line by line, and made to last.

Across the series the root occurred at al-Qamar 54/43, 54/52 and at Fāṭir 35/25. Something recorded in Fāṭir attaches here: there three words were set in order — bayyināt (clear proofs), zubur (pages), al-kitābu'l-munīr (the illuminating Book) — and it was recorded that "what came is named both as spoken proof and as written document". I rely on that treatment.

And the disputed point of the sentence is this: what does the pronoun innahu refer to?

Both readings are transmitted; I do not impose a preference. What is to be recorded is this: the sentence does not say "the same text is there". The expression fī zuburi'l-awwalīn — "it is in the scriptures of those who came before" — can cover both being present as it is and having been announced.

And a point of word order must be recorded: here the word āya occurs once more and in a new sense.

In the sūra āya has been used in three senses:

This is a datum that can be verified from the text.

And what is presented as proof here must be recorded: not a miracle but a piece of knowledge. An yaʿlamahu ʿulamāʾu banī Isrāʾīl — "that the learned of the Children of Israel know it".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the verse itself: those addressed were expecting a miracle of the kind recounted in the fourth verse. The verse points to a proof standing in front of them: the knowledge of the people of the Book who came before them.

And the same proof occurs at al-Aḥqāf 46/10: wa shahida shāhidun min banī Isrāʾīla ʿalā mithlihi fa-āmana wa'stakbartum — "and a witness from the Children of Israel testified to the like of it and believed, while you grew proud." It was treated there and I rely on that treatment.

And the frame recorded at al-Aḥqāf 46/4 attaches here: there two kinds of proof were asked for — observation (arūnī mādhā khalaqū) and transmission (iʾtūnī bi-kitābin min qabli hādhā aw athāratin min ʿilm). Al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/196-197 offers a proof of the second kind.

A note on the variant readings: the readings āyatan (accusative) and āyatun (nominative) are transmitted for the verse; both come to the same meaning, only the subject and predicate of the sentence change places.

The root ع-ج-م: the core the lexicographers give is obscurity, unintelligibility — that is, the exact opposite of the root ع-ر-ب. ʿUjma — obscurity in speech; aʿjam — one who cannot set out his meaning plainly.

And two uses of the word must be distinguished:

The al-aʿjamīn of the verse is in the first sense: those whose speech is not understood. The measure, that is, is not lineage but intelligibility.

This distinction must be recorded, because this is where a judgement would be built: the verse takes as its subject not a nation but a linguistic situation. This accords with the principle recorded in Method.

The same supposition is set up once more in the Qurʾān and was treated at Fuṣṣilat 41/44. I rely on that treatment.

Fuṣṣilat 41/44: wa law jaʿalnāhu qurʾānan aʿjamiyyan la-qālū law lā fuṣṣilat āyātuhu; a-aʿjamiyyun wa ʿarabiyyun — "Had We made it a Qurʾān in a foreign tongue they would certainly have said: 'Should its verses not have been made clear? A foreign tongue and an Arab?'"

The two verses set up the same supposition, but from different sides. The comparison is in the table:

What the two verses build together must be recorded, and this is my own reading:

Fuṣṣilat states in advance the objection of those addressed: "had it been in a foreign tongue they would have said 'it cannot be understood'." Al-Shuʿarāʾ does not even name the objection; it states the outcome directly: "they would still not believe."

The two verses come out at the same door by two different roads: one shows that the pretext changes its place, the other that the pretext does not change the outcome.

And something can be added here to what was recorded in Fuṣṣilat: in the supposition in al-Shuʿarāʾ what changes is not the Book but the person. ʿAlā baʿḍi'l-aʿjamīn — "upon one of the non-Arabic speakers". And the verb has been added too: fa-qaraʾahu ʿalayhim — "and had he recited it to them". The supposition contains the act of reciting as well: had the text come, had it been recited, they would still not have believed.

I record this as an observation about the structure: the verse carries the possibility to its very end and leaves the outcome the same at every stage.

The measure the two verses build together serves to test whether the grounds put forward in a dispute are the real reason. The test is simple: if the ground were removed, would the position change?

The verse makes this test by a supposition — if the language had been different, if the carrier had been different. And its answer is tied to the same place as the third verse of the sūra: the messenger's grief is needless, because the matter is not an inadequacy of expression.