The Unique Literary Form of the Qur’an

I was browsing some articles and I came across an excellent piece regarding the eloquence of the Qur’an. This is a subject that I have recently started reading about more and more, and I really wish that it is something that was highlighted to me much earlier on.

We have had a number of articles about the eloquence of the Quran, mostly by Br. Nouman. The paper below is written by  Hamza Tzortzis.

According to both Muslim and Non-Muslim scholarship, the Qur’an cannot be described as any of the known forms of Arabic speech; namely poetry and prose. Taha Husayn, a prominent Egyptian Litterateur, during the course of a public lecture summarised how the Qur’an achieves this unique form…
Abstract:

The inability of any person to produce anything like the Qur’an, due to its unique literary form is the essence of the Qur’anic miracle. A miracle is defined as “events which lie outside the productive capacity of nature”. The argument posed by Muslim theologians and philosophers is that if, with the finite set of Arabic linguistic tools at humanity’s disposal, there is no effective challenge; then providing a naturalistic explanation for the Qur’an’s uniqueness is incoherent and does not explain its inimitability. This is because the natural capacity of the text producer, or author, is able to produce the known literary forms in the Arabic language. The development of an entirely unique literary form is beyond the scope of the productive nature of any author, hence a supernatural entity, God, is the only sufficient and comprehensive explanation. It is the purpose of this article to explain how the Qur’an achieves this unique literary form, thereby explaining the miracle of its inimitability.

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