Arabic Literature Free Essays

Arabic literature Main article:  Arabic literature Main article:  Literature of Morocco Ibn Tufail  (Abubacer) and  Ibn al-Nafis  were pioneers of the  philosophical novel. Ibn Tufail wrote the first fictional Arabic  novel  Hayy ibn Yaqdhan  (Philosophus Autodidactus) as a response to  al-Ghazali’s  The Incoherence of the Philosophers, and then Ibn al-Nafis also wrote a novel  Theologus Autodidactus  as a response to Ibn Tufail’s  Philosophus Autodidactus. Both of these narratives had  protagonists(Hayy in  Philosophus Autodidactus  and Kamil in  Theologus Autodidactus) who were  autodidactic  feral children  living in seclusion on adesert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. We will write a custom essay sample on Arabic Literature or any similar topic only for you Order Now However, while Hayy lives alone with animals on the desert island for the rest of the story in  Philosophus Autodidactus, the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in  Theologus Autodidactus, developing into the earliest known  coming of age  plot and eventually becoming the first example of a  science fictionnovel. 17][18] Theologus Autodidactus, written by the  Arabian  polymath  Ibn al-Nafis  (1213–1288), is the first example of a science fiction novel. It deals with various science fiction elements such as  spontaneous generation,  futurology, the  end of the world and doomsday,resurrection, and the  afterlife. Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using the  scientific knowledge  of  biology,  astronomy,  cosmology  and  geology  known in his time. His main purpose behind this science fiction work was to explain  Islamic  religious teachings in terms of  science  and  philosophy  through the use of fiction. [19] A  Latin  translation of Ibn Tufail’s work,  Philosophus Autodidactus, first appeared in 1671, prepared by  Edward Pococke  the Younger, followed by an English translation by  Simon Ockley  in 1708, as well as  German  and  Dutch  translations. These translations later inspired  Daniel Defoe  to write  Robinson Crusoe, regarded as the  first novel in English. 20][21][22][23]  Philosophus Autodidactus  also inspired  Robert Boyle  to write his own philosophical novel set on an island,  The Aspiring Naturalist. [24]  The story also anticipatedRousseau’s  Emile: or, On Education  in some ways, and is also similar to  Mowgli’s story in  Rudyard Kipling’s  The Jungle Book  as well as  Tarzan’s story, in that a baby is aband oned but taken care of and fed by a mother  wolf. [citation needed] Among other innovations in Arabic literature was  Ibn Khaldun’s perspective on chronicling past events—by fully rejecting supernatural explanations, Khaldun essentially invented the scientific or sociological approach to history. citation needed] Islam [100 A. D. to 1500] 1. God’s revelations were first received around 610 by the prophet Muhammad, whose followers later collected them into the Koran, which became the basis for a new religion and community known today as Islam. 2. Though most of the pre-Islamic literature of Arabia was written in verse, prose became a popular vehicle for the dissemination of religious learning. 3. As its title â€Å"the Recitation† suggests, the Koran was made to be heard and recited; because it is literally the word of God, Muslims do not accept the Koran in translation from Arabic. . Although Persian literature borrowed from Arabic literary styles, it also created and enhanced new poetic styles, including the  ruba’i  (quatrain),  ghazal  (erotic lyric), and  masnavi  (narrative poem). 5. More widely known than any other work in Arabic, the  Thousand and One Nights  is generally excluded from the canon of classical Arabic literature due to its extravagant and improbable fabrications in prose, a form that was expected to be more serious and substantial than verse. Thousand and One Nights Myths and Legends of the World |  2001 |  Copyright Thousand and One Nights Thousand and One Nights,  also called  The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment  or simply  The Arabian Nights,  is a sprawling, centuries-old collection of tales. In the English-speaking world, it is the best-known work of Arabic stories. The framework of the collection is that a king named Shahriyar, distrustful of women, had the habit of taking a new wife every night and killing her the next day. A resourceful young woman named Shahrazad had a plan to end the deadly tradition. After marrying the king, she told him a story on their wedding night with the promise to finish it the next day. He let her live, and she repeated the trick. So captivating were her stories that Shahriyar spared her life again and again in order to hear the rest of the narrative. The origins of  Thousand and One Nights  are unknown. The oldest bit of Arabic text dates from the 800s; the first lengthy text was written in the 1400s. None of the early Arabic-language texts contains exactly the same stories. Scholars have identified Persian, Baghdadian, and Egyptian elements in the work, which seems to have developed over the years as an ever-changing collection of fairy tales, romances, fables, poems, legends about heroes, and humorous stories. The stories that are best known in the English-speaking world—those of Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and his Magic Lamp, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves—do not appear in all editions of  Thousand and One Nights. Thousand and One Nights The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. |  2012 |  Copyright Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights, series of anonymous stories in Arabic, considered as an entity to be among the classics of world literature. The cohesive plot device concerns the efforts of Scheherezade, or Sheherazade, to keep her husband, King Shahryar (or Schriyar), from killing her by entertaining him with a tale a night for 1,001 nights. The best known of these stories are those of Ali Baba, Sinbad the Sailor, and Aladdin. Although many of the stories are set in India, their origins are unknown and have been the subject of intensive scholarly investigation. The corpus began to be collected about the year 1000. At first the title was merely indicative of a large number of stories; later editors dutifully provided editions with the requisite 1,001 tales. The present form of  Thousand and One Nights  is thought to be native to Persia or one of the Arabic-speaking countries, but includes stories from a number of different countries and no doubt reflects diverse source material. The first European edition was a free translation by Abbe Antoine Galland into French (1704–17). Most subsequent French, German, and English versions lean heavily upon Galland. Among the English translations include the expurgated edition of E. W. Lane (1840), with excellent and copious notes; the unexpurgated edition by Sir Richard Burton in 16 volumes (1885–88); that of John Payne in 9 volumes (1882–84); Powys Mathers’s translation from the French text of J. C. Mardrus (rev. ed. , 4 vol. , 1937); and that of Husain Haddawy (2 vol. , 1990, 1995). Note: This file is also available as a  Word document. Acknowledgements: Al-Muntazir Madrasah, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. IMPORTANCE OF THE HOLY QUR’AAN The first lesson to be learned by all students is about the importance of the Holy Qur’aan. The Qur’aan is the Book of Allah  subhaanahu wa ta‘aalaa. Every word in the Qur’aan has come from Allah. That is why we say that it is a Holy Book. The words in the Qur’aan were sent by Allah to Prophet Muhammad  sallal-laahu ‘alayhi wa-aalihi wa sallam. The Prophet (s) received the words of Allah through angel Jibra’eel. This Qur’aan is a Holy Book that was not written by anyone but sent by Allah to Prophet Muhammad (s) through Jibra’eel. 1. It is the most truthful speech: Prophet Muhammad (s) regularly read the words of Allah to Muslims around him. These Muslims were very pleased and excited to receive the words of Allah. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  The most truthful speech, the most eloquent advice, and the greatest stories are in the Book of Allah. The Muslims listened carefully to what the Prophet read, memorized the sentences and passages of the Qur’aan, recited them regularly and followed the teachings of the Qur’aan. In order to preserve the words of Allah the Prophet appointed special people known as â€Å"Scribes of the Qur’aan† to write down the words of Allah. 2. It is in original language: Prophet Muhammad (s) was an Arab and the majority of people in Mecca and Medina spoke Arabic. Therefore the Qur’aan was sent in Arabic. Arabic is written from right to left. It is better to learn to read the Qur’aan in its original language. Therefore, we will put efforts to learn Qur’aan written in Arabic instead of simply reading its translation in other languages. . The Holy Qur’aan contains Allah’s message to all people. It tells people how to act correctly. It guides us to a correct way of life in this world. The Book of Allah also talks about life after death. It tells us that Allah has prepared Paradise for good people and Hell for bad people. The Qur’aan encourages the worship of only one God Who creates and provides for them. The Book forbids people from evil and condemns those who do wrong. It contains stories of the past Prophets and the examples of bad and good people. People are advised in the Qur’aan to be good to others and respect them. It teaches people to live in peace and harmony. 4. Qur’aan brings happiness in this world and the Hereafter. Following the Qur’aan brings happiness in this world and the world after death. The Prophet (s) said:If you desire the life of the fortunate, the death of a martyr, the salvation on the Day of Regret and the shade on the Day of Extreme Heat, then you should study the Qur’aan because it is the word of the Merciful, a sanctuary from Shaytaan and a causes the tilting of the Balance. In another Hadith we read that the Prophet (s) has said:  The recitor of the Qur’an will be spared from the calamities of the Hereafter. 5. It is the only Divine book that has remained unchanged. Allah sent the Qur’aan to His Prophet. A book sent by Allah to people is known as a Divine Book or a Heavenly Book. Other Divine Books were also sent to previous prophets. These are: Suhoof to Prophet Ibraheem  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam; Zaboor to Prophet Dawood  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam;  Tawraah to Prophet Moosaa  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam; and  Injeel to Prophet ‘Eisaa  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam. The difference between the Qur’aan and past revealed books is that the Qur’aan is the only Divine Book that has remained unaltered. The Qur’aan we have with us contains exactly the same message that was sent to Prophet Muhammad by Allah through Jibra’eel. 6. Our supplications get answered  if we were to pray after reading the Holy Qur’aan. The Prophet (s) said:  One who starts the Qur’an and finishes it, Allah will grant him one answered supplication. It also helps in strengthening our faith. Imam Ali (a) said:  Ã‚  Reciting the Qur’an plants the eed of faith. 7. The Qur’aan is the best companion. It can be of great help when a child or adult is feeling lonely. Imam Ali Zaynul ‘Aabideen (a) said:  If all who live between the East and West perish, I will have no fear as long as I have the Qur’an with me. 8. Students get wise  when they start reading the Qur’aan in their childhood. Prophet Muhammad (s ) said:  Whoever reads the Qur’an before becoming Baaligh, has indeed been given wisdom as a child. The Holy Book is the best intellectual treasure a student can have. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  The Qur’an is a wealth with which there is no poverty, and without which there is no wealth. On the other hand not caring to read and study the Qur’aan is a great loss. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  Surely the person in whose heart lacks the trace of the Qur’an is like a ruined house. 9. Muslims read the Qur’aan to understand the true teachings of Islam. Prophet Muhammad (s) left the Holy Book and the Ahlul Bayt (a) as the most important legacy for Muslims after him. He said:  I leave tow weighty things among you: The Book of Allah and my family – the Ahlul Bayt. Indeed these two will never separate until they reach me near the pool of Kawthar. 10. All Muslims recite some Soorahs in their prayers. However, it is good to memorize more Soorahs and read them in Salaat. Imam Muhammad Al-Baaqir (a) said:  Whoever recites the Qur’aan while standing in his prayer, Allah will bestow on him a hundred blessings for every letter; and whoever recites it while sitting in his prayer, Allah will reward him fifty blessings for every letter; and whoever recites it outside of his prayer, Allah will grant him ten blessings for every letter. 1. The Qur’aan is a cure to mental and spiritual diseases: Imam Hasan al-‘Askaree (a) said:  The Messenger of Allah (s) said: I advice you to the Qur’aan since it is the beneficial cure, the blessed medicine, the protection (‘Isma) for he who holds fast to it, and the salvation for he who follows it. Neither does it cause crookedness so that it departs (from the truth) nor does it deviate so that it causes trouble. Its marvels do not come to end and the vastness of refutations does not wear it. RESPECT AND RIGHTS OF THE HOLY QUR’AAN Now that we know that the Holy Qur’aan is not an ordinary book, but a Divine Book sent by Allah for the guidance of all people, we must show respect to it. Here are some of the points we need to remember. 1. A part of the Qur’aan carries the same respect as the entire Qur’aan. Allah says:  When the Qur’aan is recited, listen to  it (7:204). We know that when recitation takes place it is always of a part of the Qur’aan. Even then Allah uses the word Qur’aan for the part that is being recited. Therefore, if you have a Siparah, a binder or a booklet that contains Soorahs and passages from the Qur’aan, you treat it like a Qur’aan. . The Qur’aan should always be carried with proper care. When your Madrasah bag contains the Qur’aan, or a part of it, take extra care of the bag. Keep the bag slowly on the desk or floor instead of letting it fall on its own. Use both hands to remove the Qur’aan from your bag, kis s the cover of the Qur’aan, place it slowly on a desk (or on a wooden carrier specially built for holding the Qur’aan) and open the pages gently. 3. When the Qur’aan is being recited, listen to it and be attentive (7:204). If you are busy with something else then at least do not disturb the recitation by talking, for example, or making noise. There is reward for listening to the Qur’aan. Imam Ali Zaynul ‘Aabideen (a) said:  Whoever listens to a letter of the book of Allah, the Glorious and Almighty, without even reading it, Allah will write down for him one good deed, forgive a sin, and raise him a degree. It was the practice of unbelievers in Mecca to make a lot of noise so that others could not listen to the Qur’aan (41:26). Do not be like them and instead lend your ears to the Qur’aan and give it respect. We often wish that God would talk to us. One way to achieve this is by reading the Qur’aan. Prophet Muhammad (s): said:  Lo! Whoever has longing for Allah should listen to the word of Allah! Also, if you wish to talk to God then do Tilaawa. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  Whenever one of you would like to talk to his Lord, he should read the Qur’an. 4. The Qur’aan should be recited regularly. It is disrespect to keep the Holy Qur’aan unread. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  Brighten your homes with reciting Qur’aan; do not turn them into graves. Surely the house in which a lot of recitation takes place enjoys many blessings and the members benefit from it. Such a household shines for the inhabitants of Heaven as stars shine to the inhabitants of the earth. On the Day of Judgment the Prophet will complain to Allah about some Muslims who had abandoned the Qur’aan (25:30). Another Hadith of the Prophet (s) says:  Indeed hearts rust in the same way irons rust. He was asked: â€Å"What will polish the hearts? † The Prophet answered:  Reading the Qur’an. The more Qur’aan we read the better it is. We should discipline ourselves to read a good portion of Qur’aan daily. Imam Ali (a) said:  He who recites 100 verses daily from the Book in the order it is in, Allah writes for him the reward equal to all the good actions of every one on this earth. Shaytaan would like us not to read, understand and study the Qur’aan. Let us fight him with all our strength and faith. Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) said:  Ã‚  There is nothing more unpleasant to Shaytaan than to see a man reading the Qur’an to gain insight. 5. Children should get familiarized with the Qur’aan early in their lives. Imam as-Saadiq (AS) said:  He who recites Qur’aan while he is young, Qur’aan mixes with his flesh and his blood, and Allah places him amongst the blessed and the chosen righteous. On the Day of Judgment, Qur’aan shall become his defender and  [pray for him a handsome reward. 6. It is the right and respect of the Qur’aan that it should be followed. Imam Ja‘far Saadiq (a) said:  Ã‚  Lo! One, who learns the Qur’aan, teaches it and practices according to it, I will guide and lead him to Paradise. 7. It is also the right and respect of the Qur’aan that those who have the knowledge o f the Qur’aan should teach it to others. This is among the noblest acts. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  The best of you is he who learns the Qur’an and teaches it. 8. Take the interpretations of the Qur’aan from the Holy Prophet (s) and the Imams from his family, i. e. the Ahlul Bayt (a). Imam Hasan al-‘Askaree quoting Prophet Muhammad said:  Recite it (i. e. the Qur’aan) as Allah gives you ten rewards for each letter that you recite from it. Then the Imam (a) said:  Do you know who really holds fast to it and reaches to such honor and reward? He is the person who takes Qur’aan and its interpretation from us Ahlul-Bayt (a) or from the deputies that we send to our followers, and takes its (interpretation) neither from the opinions of those who argue (on the speech of Allah) nor form the analogy  of  those who compare (different parts of the speech of Allah). . Once you have completed reading your lesson or referring to the Qur’aan then close it gently instead of leaving it open. 2. Do not put another book or any weight above the Qur’aan. The Holy Book should always be kept on the top in a pile of books. 3. It is Haraam (forbidden) to make Najaasaat (impure things like blood and urine) touch the Qur’aan. In the event wher e the Qur’aan becomes Najis, for instance if it falls in Najis water, it is Waajib (obligatory) to purify it (make it Taahir). 4. Old and worn out copies of the Qur’aan should be disposed in safe places. This includes sending them for recycling, burying them in the earth or casting in rivers. *  Ã‚  *  Ã‚  *  Ã‚  * * MANNERS OF RECITING THE HOLY QUR’AAN By now we know that the Qur’aan is a special book and deserves respect. Now let us look at some of the manners of reciting the Qur’aan. It is the right of the Tilaawa (recitation of the Qur’aan) that we follow the rules when reciting the Qur’aan. 1. Perform Wudhoo before you prepare to read the Qur’aan. Allah says:  None can touch it (the Qur’aan) save the purified ones  (56:79). Once Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) asked his son Ismaa‘eel to read the Qur’aan. The latter said that he was not in Wudhoo. The Imam said in that case he could recite it but should not touch the writings of the Qur’aan. Therefore, it is advisable to  use a stick or pen to point to the words  or sentences of the Qur’aan you are reading if you are not in Wudhoo. 2. Read Du‘aa before Tilaawa. Reading of the Du‘aa helps to keep our focus and reminds us of what we need to take from the Holy Book. Ma‘soomeen (a) have recommended a number of Du‘aas. The Du‘aa taught by Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) appears in this booklet with Qur’aan lessons. 3. Always say  A‘oodhubillaahi minash shaytaanir rajeem  ( ) when you begin reading the Qur’aan. It means: I seek refuge in Allah from the cursed Shaytaan. This is what Allah instructs us to do in Aayah 16:98. 4. Next say  Bismillaahir rahmaanir raheem  ( )  The meaning of this phrase is: In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Whenever Imam Moosaa Al-Kaazim (a) wished to mak e a point to Haroon Rasheed using Aayaat from the Qur’aan, the Imam would begin with  A‘oodhubillaah . . . followed by  Bismillaah . . . 5. Sit facing Qiblaah when reciting the Qur’aan. Please note that this is the best direction to face. However where it may be difficult or impossible to face Qiblaah when reading the Qur’aan (for example if your desk is facing another direction) then it is all right not to face the Qiblaah. 6. Recite the Qur’aan with Tarteel  as instructed by Allah in Aayah 73:4. This means that we should recite the Qur’aan in a good voice with rhythm instead of plain reading. 7. Recite the Qur’aan slowly  Allah said to the Prophet  do not move your tongue with it (Qur’aan) to make haste therein  (75:16). The aayaat of the Qur’aan should be recited in slow tones with each word being pronounced clearly. The Prophet (s) advised Muslims not be concerned about finishing a Soorah when reciting the Qur’aan. 8. Be Humble when reciting the Qur’aan. The Prophet (s) says that the best recitor is he who is humble when reciting the Qur’aan and realizes his own insignificance. Some people exhibit their insignificance and the awe of talking to Allah through weeping. This is a good sign. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:Eyes that weep when reciting the Qur’an will be shining with delight on the Day of Resurrection. 9. Try to understand the recitation. Holy Qur’aan is a book of Guidance (2:2). It is necessary for us to understand the message Allah sent all people through Prophet Muhammad (s). 10. Read from the Qur’aan by looking at the writings instead of reciting from your memory. In a Hadith from one of our Imams it is said that mere looking at the writings of the Qur’aan carries reward. 11. Interact with the Qur’aan. Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) says that it is important to react to the aayaat of the Qur’aan when reciting it. When we come across aayaat on Paradise, Mercy and Grace of Allah, Good Outcome in the hereafter, we should hope for these in our hearts. On the other hand if we are reading aayaat that warn us about the punishment, fire, Hell, etc. we should pray to be saved from these. 12. Open your heart and mind to the Qur’aan and ponder over what you read. Allah often invites us to think and ponder over the contents of the Qur’aan. In 47:24 Allah says:  Do they not then think deeply in the Qur’aan, or are their hearts locked up? 13. Perform Sajdah where required to do so  In the entire Qur’aan there are 15 places where performing of Sajdah is required. At 4 places it is Waajib (obligatory) to do Sajdah if we were to read or listen to these sections of the Qur’aan. For the rest of the places it is Mustahab (recommended) to do Sajdah. 14. Say  Sadqallaahul ‘Aliyyul ‘Azeem  ( ) every time you end a recitation of the Qur’aan. The meaning of this phrase is: Allah, the Sublime, the Great, is truthful in what He has said 15. Read one of the Du‘aas after Tilaawa. The Ma‘soomeen have taught a number of Du‘aas, from these two have been included with Qur’aan lessons. In these Du‘aas, amongst other things, we pray to the Almighty to enlighten us through the Qur’aan and make us follow the teachings of the Qur’aan. THE HOLY QURAN: Islam appeared in the form of a book: the Quran. Muslims, consider the Quran (sometimes spelled â€Å"Koran†) to be the Word of God as transmitted by the Angel Gabriel, in the Arabic language, through the Prophet Muhammad. The Muslim view, moreover, is that the Quran supersedes earlier revelations; it is regarded as their summation and completion. It is the final revelation, as Muhammad is regarded as the final prophet – ‘the Seal of the Prophets. † In a very real sense the Quran is the mentor of millions of Muslims, Arab and non-Arab alike; it shapes their everyday life, anchors them to a unique system of law, and inspires them by its guiding principles. Written in noble language, this Holy Text has done more than move multitudes to tears and ecstasy; it has also, for almost fourteen hundred years, illuminated the lives of Muslims with its eloquent message of uncompromising monotheism, human dignity, righteous living, individual responsibility, and social justice. For countless millions, consequently, it has been the single most important force in guiding their religious, social, and cultural lives. Indeed, the Quran is the cornerstone on which the edifice of Islamic civilization has been built. The text of the Quran was delivered orally by the Prophet Muhammad to his followers as it was revealed to him. The first verses were revealed to him in or about 610, and the last revelation dates from the last year of his life, 632. His followers at first committed the Quran to memory and then, as instructed by him, to writing. Although the entire contents of the Quran, the placement of its verses, and the arrangement of its chapters date back to the Prophet, as long as he lived he continued to receive revelations. Consequently, the Holy Text could only be collected as a single corpus – â€Å"between the two covers† – after the death of Muhammad. This is exactly what happened. After the battle of al-Yamamah in 633, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, later to become the second caliph, suggested to Abu Bakr, the first caliph, that because of the grievous loss of life in that battle, there was a very real danger of losing the Quran, enshrined as it was in the memories of the faithful and in uncollated fragments. Abu Bakr recognized the danger and entrusted the task of gathering the revelations to Zayd ibn Thabit, who as the chief scribe of the Prophet was the person to whom Muhammad frequently dictated the revelations in his lifetime. With great difficulty, the task was carried out and the first complete manuscript compiled from â€Å"bits of parchment, thin white stones – ostracae – leafless palm branches, and the memories of men. Later, during the time of ‘Uthman, the third caliph, a final, authorized text was prepared and completed in 651, and this has remained the text in use ever since. The contents of the Quran differ in substance and arrangement from the Old and New Testaments. Instead of presenting a straight historical narrative, as do the Gospels and the historical books of the Old Testament, the Quran treats, in allusive style, spiritual and practical as well as historical matters. The Quran is divided into 114 surahs, or chapters, and the surahs are conventionally assigned to two broad categories: those revealed at Mecca and those revealed at Medina. The surahs revealed at Mecca – at the beginning of Muhammad’s mission – tend to be short and to stress, in highly moving language, the eternal themes of the unity of God, the necessity of faith, the punishment of those who stray from the right path, and the Last Judgment, when all man’s actions and beliefs will be judged. The surahs revealed at Medina are longer, often deal in detail with specific legal, social, or political situations, and sometimes can only be properly understood with a full knowledge of the circumstances in which they were revealed All the surahs are divided into ayahs or verses and, for purposes of pedagogy and recitation, the Quran as a whole is divided into thirty parts, which in turn are divided into short divisions of nearly equal length, to facilitate study and memorization. The surahs hemselves are of varying length, ranging from the longest, Surah 2, with 282 verses, to the shortest, Surahs 103, 108, and 110, each of which has only three. With some exceptions the surahs are arranged in the Quran in descending order of length, with the longest at the beginning and the shortest at the end. The major exception to this arrangement is the opening surah, â€Å"al-Fatihah,† which contains seven verses and which serves as an introduction to the entire revelation: In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds; The Merciful, the Compassionate; Master of the Day of Judgment; Thee only do we worship, and Thee alone we ask for help. Guide us in the straight path, The path of those whom Thou hast favored; not the path of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray. Non-Muslims are often struck by the range of styles found in the Quran. Passages of impassioned beauty are no less common than vigorous narratives. The sublime â€Å"Verse of the Throne† is perhaps one of the most famous: God – There is no god but He,   The Living. the Everlasting; Slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep; To Him belongs all that is In the heavens and the earth; Who is there that can intercede with Him Save by His leave? He knows what lies before them And what is after them, Nor do they encompass anything of His knowledge Except such as He wills; His Throne extends over the heavens and earth; The preserving of them wearies Him not; He is the Most High, the All-Glorious. Muslims regard the Quran as untranslatable; the language in which it was revealed – Arabic – is inseparable from its message and Muslims everywhere, o matter what their native tongue, must learn Arabic to read the Sacred Book and to perform their worship. The Quran of course is available in many languages, but these versions are regarded as interpretations rather than translations – partly because the Arabic language, extraordinarily concise and allusive, is impossible to translate in a mechanical, word-for-word way. The inimitability of the Quran has crystalli zed in the Muslim view of i’jaz or â€Å"impossibility,† which holds that the style of the Quran, being divine, cannot be imitated: any attempt to do so is doomed to failure. It must also be remembered that the Quran was originally transmitted orally to the faithful and that the Holy Text is not meant to be read only in silence. From the earliest days it has always been recited aloud or, more accurately, chanted. As a result, several traditional means of chanting, or intoning, the Quran were found side by side. These methods carefully preserved the elaborate science of reciting the Quran – with all its intonations and its cadence and punctuation. As the exact pronunciation was important – and learning it took years – special schools were founded to be sure that no error would creep in as the traditional chanting methods were handed down. It is largely owing to the existence of these traditional methods of recitation that the text of the Quran was preserved without error. As the script in which the Quran was first written down indicated only the consonantal skeleton of the words, oral recitation was an essential element in the transmission of the text. Because the circumstances of each revelation were thought necessary to correct interpretation, the community, early in the history of Islam, concluded that it was imperative to gather as many traditions as possible about the life and actions of the Prophet so that the Quran might be more fully understood. These traditions not only provided the historical context for many of the surahs – thus contributing to their more exact explication – but also contained a wide variety of subsidiary information on the practice, life, and legal rulings of the Prophet and his companions. This material became the basis for what is called the sunnah, or â€Å"practice† of the Prophet – the deeds, utterances, and taqrir (unspoken approval) of Muhammad. Together with the Quran, the sunnah, as embodied in the canonical collections of traditions, the hadith, became the basis for the shari’ah, the sacred law of Islam. Unlike Western legal systems, the shari’ah makes no distinction between religious and civil matters; it is the codification of God’s Law, and it concerns itself with every aspect of social, political, economic, and religious life. Islamic law is thus different from any other legal system; it differs from canon law in that it is not administered by a church hierarchy; in Islam there is nothing that corresponds to a â€Å"church† in the Christian sense. Instead, there is the ummah – the community of the believers – whose cohesion is guaranteed by the sacred law. Every action of the pious Muslim, therefore, is determined by the Quran, by precedents set by the Prophet, and by the practice of the early community of Islam as enshrined in the shari’ah. No description, however, can fully capture the overwhelming importance of the Quran to Muslims. Objectively, it is the central fact of the Islamic faith, the Word of God, the final and complete revelation, the foundation and framework of Islamic law, and the source of Islamic thought, language, and action. It is the essence of Islam. Yet it is, in the deeply personal terms of a Muslim, something more as well. In innumerable, almost indescribable ways, it is also the central fact of Muslim life. To a degree almost incomprehensible in the West it shapes and colors broadly, specifically, and totally the thoughts, emotions, and values of the devout Muslim’s life from birth to death. ARABIC LITERATURE: The Quran, the primary document of the Islamic faith, is the first Arabic book. Its style, at once vigorous, allusive, and concise, deeply influenced later compositions in Arabic, as it continues to color the mode of expression of native speakers of Arabic, Christian as well as Muslim, both in writing and in conversation. The Quran also largely determined the course of Arabic literature. The earliest Arabic prose came into being not from literary motives, but to serve religious and practical needs, above all the need to fully understand the Islamic revelation and the circumstances of the first Muslim community in the Hijaz. The sayings and actions of the Prophet and his Companions were collected and preserved, at first by memory and then by writing, to be finally collected and arranged by such men as al-Bukhari and Muslim in the ninth century. This material, the hadith, not only provided the basic texts from which Islamic law was elaborated, but also formed the raw material for historians of the early Muslim community. Since each hadith, or â€Å"saying,† is a first-person narrative, usually by an eyewitness of the event described, they have an immediacy and freshness that has come down unimpaired through the centuries. The personalities of the narrators – Abu Bakr, Umar, Aishah, and a host of others are just as vivid as the events described, for the style of each hadith is very personal. The hadith also determined the characteristic form of such works as Ibn Ishaq’s Life of the Messenger of God, originally written in the middle of the eighth century. In this book, hadith dealing with the life of the Prophet are arranged in chronological order, and the comments of the author are kept to a minimum. Events are seen through the eyes of the people who witnessed them; three or four versions of the same event are often given, and in each case the â€Å"chain of transmission† of the hadith is given, so that the reader may judge its authenticity. During Umayyad times, a number of historians wrote monographs on specific historical, legal, and religious questions, and in each case these authors seem to have adhered to the hadith method of composition. Although few of the works of these writers have survived in their entirety, enough has been preserved by later incorporation in such vast works as the Annals of al-Tabari to give us an idea not only of their method of composition, but also of their wide-ranging interests. The practice of prefacing a chain of authorities to each hadith led to the compilation of vast biographical dictionaries, like the Book of Classes of the early ninth century author Ibn Said, which includes a biography of the Prophet and a great deal of information on notable personalities in Mecca and Medina during his lifetime. Works such as this allowed readers to identify and judge the veracity of transmitters of hadith; later, the content of biographical dictionaries was broadened to include poets, writers, eminent reciters of the Quran, scientists, and the like. These biographical dictionaries are often lively reading, and are a mine of information about social and political circumstances in the Islamic world. The spread of Islam naturally found chroniclers, such as al-Waqidi, who wrote in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, and al-Baladhuri, who composed his well known Book of the Conquests in the ninth century. These books, like the hadith, were written for practical motives. Al-Waqidi was interested in establishing the exact chronology of the spread of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and adjoining areas, while al-Baladhuri was interested in legal and tax problems connected with the settlement of new lands. Their books nevertheless are classics of their kind and, aside from containing much interesting information, they have passages of great descriptive power. By the ninth century, the method of compiling history from hadith and carefully citing the authorities for each tradition – a process which had resulted in books of unwieldy length – was abandoned by some authors, like al-Dinawari and al-Ya’qubi, who omitted the chains of transmitters and combined hadith to produce a narrative. The result was greater readability and smaller compass, at the sacrifice of richness and complexity. The works of al-Dinawari and al-Ya’qubi, unlike those of their predecessors, aimed to entertain as well as instruct; they are â€Å"literary† productions. This form of light history reached its apogee in the tenth century in al-Mas’udi’s brilliant and entertaining Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, a comprehensive encyclopedia of history, geography, and literature. The literary productions of these men would not, however, have been possible without the careful collections of historical hadith made by their predecessors. Just as the writing of history began from practical rather than literary motives, so the collection and preservation of Arabic poetry was undertaken by scholars with, at first, little interest in its artistic merit. The linguists and exegetes of Kufa and Basra began collecting this poetry in the eighth century because of the light it threw on unusual expressions and grammatical structures in the Quran and the hadith. Editions and commentaries were prepared of the poems of ‘Antarah, Imru al-Qays, and many others, and thus the works of the early poets were preserved for later generations. The Quran a part, poetry has always been considered the highest expression of literary art among the Arabs. Long before the coming of Islam, Bedouin poets had perfected the forms of panegyric, satire, and elegy. Their poetry obeys strict conventions, both in form and content, which indicates that it must have had a long period of development before it was finally committed to writing by scholars. The principal form used by the desert poets was the qasidah or ode, a poem of variable length rhyming in the last syllable of each line. The qasidah begins with a description of the abandoned encampment of the poet’s beloved and goes on to an account of his anguish at her absence and his consuming love for her. The poet then describes an arduous journey across the desert nd ends the qasidah with an appeal to the generosity of his host. Although the subject matter is almost invariable, the language is very complex and of great precision. In the Hijaz during the first century of Islam, contemporary with the first hadith scholars, a group of poets broke with the past and introduced new forms and subjects. Men like ‘Umar ibn Abi Rabi’ah wrote realistic and urbane verse, and a school of poetry which expressed the themes of Platonic love grew up around the poet Jamil ibn Muiammar, better known as Jamil al-‘Udhri. The lives and works of these poets of the Umayyad period are preserved in the entertaining tenth-century anthology by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, the Book of Songs. The Umayyad court in Damascus patronized poets and musicians. It was also the scene of the development of the type of Arabic literature called adab. Adab is usually translated as â€Å"belles-lettres,† which is slightly misleading. This literature, at least in its inception, was created to serve the practical end of educating the growing class of government ministers in the Arabic language, manners and deportment, history, and statecraft. Works in Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Greek, and Syriac began to find their way into Arabic at this time. ‘Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahya al-Katib, an Umayyad official, and the creator of this genre, defined its aims as follows: â€Å"Cultivate the Arabic language so that you may speak correctly; develop a handsome script which will add luster to your writings; learn the poetry of the Arabs by heart; familiarize yourself with unusual ideas and expressions; read the history of the Arabs and the Persians, and remember their great deeds. ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Muqaffa’, a contemporary of ‘Abd al-Ham id ibn Yahya, translated the history of the ancient kings of Persia into Arabic, as well as Kalilah wa-Dimnah, an Indian book of advice for princes cast in the form of animal fables. His works are the earliest surviving examples of Arabic art prose and are still used as models in schools throughout the Middle East. By the ninth century, Arabic literature had entered its classical age. The various genres had been defined – adab, history, Quranic exegesis, geography, biography, poetry, satire, and many more. Al-Jahiz was perhaps the greatest stylist of the age, and one of the most original personalities. He wrote more than two hundred books, on every conceivable subject; he was critical, rational, and always amusing. His Book of Animals is the earliest Arabic treatise on zoology and contains very modern-sounding discussions of such things as animal mimetism and biological adaptation. He wrote one of the earliest and best treatises on rhetoric and a large number of amusing essays. By the time of his death at the age of ninety-six he had shown that Arabic prose was capable of handling any subject with ease. The most gifted of al-Jahiz’s contemporaries was probably Ibn Qutaybah, also a writer of encyclopedic learning and an excellent stylist. His Book of Knowledge, a history of the world beginning with the creation, is the earliest work of its kind and later had many imitators. The tenth century witnessed the creation of a new form in Arabic literature, the maqamat. This was the title of a work by al-Hamadhani, called Badi’ al-Zaman, â€Å"The Wonder of the Age. His Maqamat (â€Å"Sessions†) is a series of episodes written in rhymed prose concerning the life of Abu al-Fath al-Iskandari, a sort of confidence trickster, who takes on a different personality in each story and always succeeds in bilking his victims. These stories are witty and packed with action, and were immediately popular. Al-Hamadhani was imitated by al-Hariri a hundred year s later. Al-Hariri was a linguistic virtuoso, and his Maqamat is filled with obscure words, alliteration, puns, and wild metaphors. He too was extremely popular, and many learned commentaries were written on his Maqamat. This purely Arab form can most closely be compared with the Spanish picaresque novels, which it may have influenced. Rhymed prose, which had come to be used even in government documents, was employed by Abu al-‘Ala al-Ma’arri in his Message of Forgiveness, one of the best known of Arabic prose works. Al-Ma’arri lived in the eleventh century, leading an ascetic life in his native Syrian village. Blind from the age of four, he possessed a prodigious memory and great intellectual curiosity and skepticism. The Message of Forgiveness is cast in the form of a journey to paradise; the narrator there interrogates the scholars and poets of the past regarding their lives and works, receiving surprising and often ironic responses. The book is an extended critique of literature and philology, and represents a high point of classical Arabic culture. One of the other great figures of late classical literature was the poet al-Mutanabbi, whose skill in handling the complex meters of Arabic poetry was probably unsurpassed. His verbal brilliance has always been admired by Arab critics, although it is difficult for those whose native tongue is not Arabic to appreciate it fully. The period between the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258 and the nineteenth century is generally held to be a period of literary as well as political decline for the Arabs. It is true that during these five hundred years Arabic writers were more preoccupied with the preservation of their literary heritage than with the development of new forms and ideas. This is the age of encyclopedias, commentaries, and lexicons. Faced with the massive destruction of books by the invasions of Genghis Khan and Hulagu and later of Tamerlane, scholars compiled digests and abridgments of works that had survived in order to ensure their continued existence. There were also some original works, however. Ibn Battutah, the greatest traveler of the Middle Ages, lived in the fourteenth century, and his Travel provide a fascinating picture of the Muslim world, from the islands of the Indian Ocean to Timbuktu. Ibn Khaldun, like Ibn Battutah a native of North Africa, lived in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. His Prolegomena is a work of brilliance and originality; the author analyzes human society in terms of general sociological laws and gives a lucid account of the factors that contribute to the rise and decline of civilizations. Ibn Khaldun’s style is innovative, simple, and very personal, and perfectly suited to the expression of his often difficult ideas. This post classical period also saw the composition of popular romances, such as the Romance of ‘Antar, based on the life of the famous pre-Islamic poet; the Romance of the Bani Hilal, a cycle of stories and poems based on the migration of an Arabian tribe to North Africa in the eleventh century; and many more. These romances could be heard recited in coffee shops from Aleppoto Marrakesh until very recently. The most famous popular work of all, The Thousand and One Nights, assumed its present form during the fifteenth century. A revival of Arabic literature began in the nineteenth century, and coincided with the first efforts of Arabic speaking nations to assert their independence of Ottoman rule. Napoleon, during his brief occupation of Egypt in the late eighteenth century, introduced a printing press with fonts of Arabic type, and Muhammad ‘Ali, ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, initiated a series of projects to modernize Egypt. He encouraged the use of Arabic in schools and government institutions, and established a printing press. Selected Egyptian students were sent to study in France, and on their return assigned to undertake translations of Western technical manuals on agriculture, engineering, mathematics, and military tactics. These works, together with many of the classics of Arabic literature, were printed at the government press at Bulaq and had a profound impact on intellectuals in the Arab East. Another factor in the literary revival was the swift growth of journalism in Lebanon and Egypt. Starting in the late 1850s, newspapers were soon available through the Middle East. By 1900 well over a hundred and fifty newspapers and journals were being published. These journals had a great influence on the development and modernization of the written Arabic language; their stress on substance rather than style did much to simplify Arabic prose and bring it within the comprehension of everyone. One of the first leaders of the Arabic literary renaissance was the Lebanese writer and scholar Butrus al-Bustani, whose dictionary and encyclopedia awakened great interest in the problems of expressing modern Western ideas in the Arabic language. His nephew Sulayman translated Homer’s Iliad into Arabic, thus making one of the first expressions of Western literature accessible to the Arabic-reading public. Other writers, such as the Egyptian Mustafa al-Manfaluti, adapted French romantic novels to the tastes of the Arab public, as well as writing elegant essays on a variety of themes. The historical novel, in the hands of Jurji Zaydan, proved immensely popular, perhaps because of the intense interest Arabs have always had in their past, and because of the novelty of a new form. But the first Arabic novel that can rank with European productions is Muhammad Husayn Haykal’s Zaynab, set in Egypt and dealing with local problems. Perhaps the greatest figure in modern Arabic literature is Taha Husayn. Blind from an early age, Taha Husayn wrote movingly of his life and beloved Egypt in his autobiography, al-Ayyam, â€Å"The Days. † Taha Husayn was a graduate of both al-Azhar and the Sorbonne, and his voluminous writings on Arabic literature contributed a new critique of this vast subject. The novel was not the only new form introduced to the Arabic-reading public. The drama, first in the form of translations of Western work, then of original compositions, was pioneered by Ahmad Shawqi and came to maturity in the hands of Tawfiq al-Hakim. Tawfiq al-Hakim’s long career and devotion to the theater did much to make this one of the liveliest arts of the Middle East. The history of modern Arabic poetry, with its many schools and contending styles, is almost impossible to summarize. Traditional forms and subjects were challenged by ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad, Mahmud Shukri, and Ibrahim al-Mazini, who strove to introduce nineteenth-century European themes and techniques into Arabic, not always with success. Lebanese poets were in the forefront of modernist verse, and one of them, Gibran Kahlil Gibran, proved very popular in the West. Poets are now experimenting with both old and new techniques, although discussions of form have given way to concern for content. The exodus of Palestinians from their native land has become a favorite theme, often movingly handled. In Saudi Arabia, it was not until well into the twentieth century that literary movements in neighboring lands made themselves felt. Poetry, of course, has been cultivated in Arabia since the pre-Islamic period, and it has lately been influenced by new forms and subjects. Hasan al-Qurashi, Tahir Zamakhshari, Hasan Faqi, and Mahrum (the pen name of Amir ‘Abd Allah al-Faysal) have won renown for their poetry throughout the Arab world. Hasan Faqi’s poetry is introspective and philosophical, while the verse of the three others is lyrical and romantic. Ghazi al-Gosaibi is distinguished by a fresh, fecund imagination that expresses itself in both Arabic and English verse. Two novels by the late Hamid al-Damanhuri have been well received. They are Thaman al-Tadhiyah, â€Å"The Price of Sacrifice,† and Wa-Marrat al-Ayyam, â€Å"And the Days Went By. † With the rapid increase in education and communications, presses are now beginning to publish more and more works by writers, and it can certainly be expected that the great social changes that are taking place will eventually be reflected in equally far-reaching developments in the Arabic literature. Introduction â€Å"Read in the Name of your Lord†. [1] These were the first few words of the Qur’an revealed to the   Prophet Muhammad over 1400 years ago. Muhammad, who was known to have been in retreat and   meditation in a cave outside Mecca [2], had received the first few words of a book that would have a   tremendous impact on the world of Arabic liter ature. [3] Not being known to have composed any piece   of poetry and not having any special rhetorical gifts, [4] Muhammed had just received the beginning of a   book that would deal with matters of belief, legislation, international law, olitics, ritual, spirituality, and   economics [5] in an ‘entirely new literary form’. Armstrong states, â€Å"It is as though Muhammad had created an entirely new literary form†¦Without this experience of the   Koran, it is extremely unlikely that Islam would have taken root. † [6] This unique literary form was the cause of the dramatic intellectual revival of desert Arabs [7], and after   thirteen years of the first revelation, it became the only reference for a new state in Medina. [8] This new   form of speech, the Qur’an, became the sole source of the new civilisation’s political, philosophical,   and spiritual outlook. It is well known amongst Muslim and Non-Muslim scholars that the Qur’anic discourse cannot be   described as any of the known forms of Arabic speech; namely Poetry and Prose. [9] Taha Husayn, [10] a prominent Egyptian Litterateur, during the course of a public lecture summarised   how the Qur’an achieves this unique form: â€Å"But you know that the Qur’an is not prose and that it is not verse either. It is rather Qur’an, and it cannot   be called by any other name but this. It is not verse, and that is clear; for it does not bind itself to the   bonds of verse. And it is not prose, for it is bound by bonds peculiar to itself, not found elsewhere;   some of the binds are related to the endings of its verses and some to that musical sound which is all   its own. It is therefore neither verse nor prose, but it is â€Å"a Book whose verses have been perfected the   expounded, from One Who is Wise, All-Aware. † We cannot therefore say its prose, and its text itself is   not verse. It has been one of a kind, and nothing like it has ever preceded or followed it. † [11] Any expression of the Arabic language falls into the literary forms of Prose and Poetry. There are other   ‘sub’ forms that fall into the above categories. Kahin, which is a form of rhymed prose, is one of these   ‘sub’ forms; but all literary forms can be described as prose and poetry. Poetry Arabic Poetry is a form of metrical speech with a rhyme. [12] The rhyme in Arabic poetry is achieved by   every line of the poem ending upon a specific letter. [13] The metrical aspect of Arabic poetry is due to   its rhythmical divisions, these divisions are called ‘al-Bihar’, literally meaning ‘The Seas’ in Arabic. This term has been used to describe the rhythmical divisions as a result of the way the poem moves   according to its rhythm. In Arabic poetry there are sixteen rhythmical patterns, which all of Arabic poetry adheres too or is   loosely based upon; 1. at-Tawil 2. al-Bassit 3. al-Wafir 4. al-Kamil 5. ar-Rajs 6. al-Khafif 7. al-Hazaj 8. al-Muttakarib 9. al-Munsarih 10. al-Muktatab 11. al-Muktadarak 12. al-Madid 13. al-Mujtath 14. al-Ramel 15. al-Khabab 16. as-Saria’ Each one of the al-Bihar have a unique rhythmical division. [14] The al-Bihar were first codified in the   8th century by al-Khalil bin Ahmad and have changed little since. The al-Bihar are based on the length   of syllables. A short syllable is a consonant followed by a short vowel. A long syllable is a vowelled   letter followed by either an unvowelled consonant or a long vowel. A nunation sign at the end of a word   also makes the final syllable long. In Arabic poetry each line is divided into two halves. Below are basic scansions of the metres commonly found in Arabic poetry, showing long (—) and   short (^) syllables. They represent pairs of half-lines and should be read from left to right. The patterns   are not rigidly followed: two short syllables may be substituted for a long one. Tawil — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | Kamil ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | Wafir ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ â€⠀ — | ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ — — | Rajaz — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | Hazaj ^ — — — | ^ — — — | ^ — — — | ^ — — — | Basit — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | Khafif — ^ — — | — — ^ — | — ^ — — | — ^ — — | — — ^ — | — ^ — — | Sari’ — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ â€⠀ | [For more details on the al-Bihar please see  www. theinimitablequran. om/TheRhythmicalPatterns. html ] An example of an Arabic poem, is the ancient Arabian poem called ‘Abu-l-‘Ata of Sind’: Of thee did I dream, while spears between us were quivering And sooth, of our blood full drop had drunken the tawny shafts! I know not, by heaven I swear, and true is the word I say This pang, is it love sickness, or wrought by a spell from thee. If it be a spell, then grant me grace of my love-longing If other the sickness be, then none is the guilt of thine. [15] This poem, in the original Arabic, falls into the rhythmical pattern of Tawil, one of the al-Bihar shown   above. 16] A literary analysis on any Arabic Poem will conclude that it adheres too or is based upon   the rhythmical patterns. This is supported by Louis Cheikho who collected pre-Islamic and Islamic   poetry and concluded that all of the poems conformed and were based upon the al-Bihar. [17] Pros e Arabic Prose can be called non-metrical speech, meaning it does not have a rhythmical pattern like   poetry mentioned above. Arabic prose can be further divided into two categories; Saj’ which is rhymed   prose and Mursal which is straight prose or what some may call ‘normal speech’. [18] An apt description of Saj’ is, in the words of Von Deffer: A literary form with some emphasis on rhythm and rhyme, but distinct from poetry. Saj’ is not really as   sophisticated as poetry, but has been employed by Arab poets, and is the best known of the pre- Islamic Arab prosodies. It is distinct from poetry in its lack of metre, i. e. it has not consistent rhythmical   pattern, and it shares with poetry the element of rhyme, though in many cases some what irregularly   employed. † [19] Mursal can be defined as a literary form that goes on and is not divided, but is continued straight   throughout without any divisions, either of rhyme or of a nything else. 20] Mursal is meant as a way of   expression close to the everyday spoken language, examples can be seen in speeches and prayers   intended to encourage or motivate the masses. The Qur’ans Literary Form The Qur’anic discourse cannot be described as any of the known literary forms. The most predominant   opinion is that it doesn’t adhere to any of the rules known to poetry and prose. Another opinion is that   the Qur’an combines metrical and non-metrical composition to create its own literary form. Some   scholars disagree with the above opinions and claim that the Qur’an is a form of rhymed prose, saj’. This opinion has arisen mainly due to the similarities of pre-Islamic prose and early Meccan chapters   of the Qur’an. However, the scholars who carry this opinion do not contend that the Qur’an is unique by   its use of literary and stylistic elements that render it inimitable. This unique use of literary elements   has not been found in any Arabic Prose, past or present. Below is an explanation, with reference to the main opinions above, on how the Qur’an achieves its   unique inimitable form. Non-compliance to the Rules of Prose or Poetry The Qur’anic literary form differs as it does not fit in to any of the literary categories explained above,   [21] it is not like the prose of Saj’ or Mursal and it doesn’t fit into any of the al-Bihar. This can be seen by   the following example: Wad Duha wal laili idha saja Ma waddaka Rabbuka wa maa qala Wa lal akhiraatu khairul laka minal oola Wa la sawfa ya teeka Rabbuka fa tarda†¦ By the morning hours and by the night most still Your Lord has neither forsaken you nor hates you And indeed the hereafter is better for you than the present And verily your Lord will give you so that you shall be well pleased†¦ [22] The examination of the whole chapter with reference to the above literary forms indicates that it is not   Saj’ or Mursal as this verse has an internal rhythm, whereas Saj’ does not have a consistent rhythm   and Mursal has no rhythm or rhyme. Also it cannot be described as poetry; the totality of this chapter, or   any other chapter for that matter, does not adhere to any of the al-Bihar. Unique Fusion of Metrical and non-Metrical Speech Some parts of the Qur’an follow the rules of poetry, that is, some verses can be described as one of   the al-Bihar. 23] When the totality of a Qur’anic Chapter, that contains some these verses is analysed,   it is not possible to distinguish its literary form. â€Å"The Qur’an is not verse, but it is rhythmic. The rhythm of some verses resemble the regularity of saj’ †¦But it was recognized by Quraysh critics to belong to neither one nor the other category. † [24] The Qur’an ach ieves this unique literary form by intermingling metrical and non-Metrical speech in   such a way that the difference can not be perceived. [25] This intermingling of metrical and non- metrical composition is present throughout the whole of the Qur’an. The following examples illustrate   this, â€Å"But the righteous will be in Gardens with Springs – ‘Enter in Peace and Safety! ’ – and We shall   remove any bitterness from their hearts: [they will be like] brothers, sitting on couches, face to face. No   weariness will ever touch them there, nor will they ever be expelled. [Prophet] tell My servants that I am   the Forgiving, the Merciful, but My torment is the truly painful one. Tell them too about Abraham’s   guests: when they came to him and said â€Å"Peace,† he said, ‘We are afraid of you’† [26] When reading the original Arabic of the above verse the reader moves from metric composition to   prose with out experiencing the slightest change of style or mode. [27] The same mingling of metrical   and non-metrical composition How to cite Arabic Literature, Essay examples

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Arabic literature Main article:  Arabic literature Main article:  Literature of Morocco Ibn Tufail  (Abubacer) and  Ibn al-Nafis  were pioneers of the  philosophical novel. Ibn Tufail wrote the first fictional Arabic  novel  Hayy ibn Yaqdhan  (Philosophus Autodidactus) as a response to  al-Ghazali’s  The Incoherence of the Philosophers, and then Ibn al-Nafis also wrote a novel  Theologus Autodidactus  as a response to Ibn Tufail’s  Philosophus Autodidactus. Both of these narratives had  protagonists(Hayy in  Philosophus Autodidactus  and Kamil in  Theologus Autodidactus) who were  autodidactic  feral children  living in seclusion on adesert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. We will write a custom essay sample on Arabic Literature or any similar topic only for you Order Now However, while Hayy lives alone with animals on the desert island for the rest of the story in  Philosophus Autodidactus, the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in  Theologus Autodidactus, developing into the earliest known  coming of age  plot and eventually becoming the first example of a  science fictionnovel. 17][18] Theologus Autodidactus, written by the  Arabian  polymath  Ibn al-Nafis  (1213–1288), is the first example of a science fiction novel. It deals with various science fiction elements such as  spontaneous generation,  futurology, the  end of the world and doomsday,resurrection, and the  afterlife. Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using the  scientific knowledge  of  biology,  astronomy,  cosmology  and  geology  known in his time. His main purpose behind this science fiction work was to explain  Islamic  religious teachings in terms of  science  and  philosophy  through the use of fiction. [19] A  Latin  translation of Ibn Tufail’s work,  Philosophus Autodidactus, first appeared in 1671, prepared by  Edward Pococke  the Younger, followed by an English translation by  Simon Ockley  in 1708, as well as  German  and  Dutch  translations. These translations later inspired  Daniel Defoe  to write  Robinson Crusoe, regarded as the  first novel in English. 20][21][22][23]  Philosophus Autodidactus  also inspired  Robert Boyle  to write his own philosophical novel set on an island,  The Aspiring Naturalist. [24]  The story also anticipatedRousseau’s  Emile: or, On Education  in some ways, and is also similar to  Mowgli’s story in  Rudyard Kipling’s  The Jungle Book  as well as  Tarzan’s story, in that a baby is aband oned but taken care of and fed by a mother  wolf. [citation needed] Among other innovations in Arabic literature was  Ibn Khaldun’s perspective on chronicling past events—by fully rejecting supernatural explanations, Khaldun essentially invented the scientific or sociological approach to history. citation needed] Islam [100 A. D. to 1500] 1. God’s revelations were first received around 610 by the prophet Muhammad, whose followers later collected them into the Koran, which became the basis for a new religion and community known today as Islam. 2. Though most of the pre-Islamic literature of Arabia was written in verse, prose became a popular vehicle for the dissemination of religious learning. 3. As its title â€Å"the Recitation† suggests, the Koran was made to be heard and recited; because it is literally the word of God, Muslims do not accept the Koran in translation from Arabic. . Although Persian literature borrowed from Arabic literary styles, it also created and enhanced new poetic styles, including the  ruba’i  (quatrain),  ghazal  (erotic lyric), and  masnavi  (narrative poem). 5. More widely known than any other work in Arabic, the  Thousand and One Nights  is generally excluded from the canon of classical Arabic literature due to its extravagant and improbable fabrications in prose, a form that was expected to be more serious and substantial than verse. Thousand and One Nights Myths and Legends of the World |  2001 |  Copyright Thousand and One Nights Thousand and One Nights,  also called  The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment  or simply  The Arabian Nights,  is a sprawling, centuries-old collection of tales. In the English-speaking world, it is the best-known work of Arabic stories. The framework of the collection is that a king named Shahriyar, distrustful of women, had the habit of taking a new wife every night and killing her the next day. A resourceful young woman named Shahrazad had a plan to end the deadly tradition. After marrying the king, she told him a story on their wedding night with the promise to finish it the next day. He let her live, and she repeated the trick. So captivating were her stories that Shahriyar spared her life again and again in order to hear the rest of the narrative. The origins of  Thousand and One Nights  are unknown. The oldest bit of Arabic text dates from the 800s; the first lengthy text was written in the 1400s. None of the early Arabic-language texts contains exactly the same stories. Scholars have identified Persian, Baghdadian, and Egyptian elements in the work, which seems to have developed over the years as an ever-changing collection of fairy tales, romances, fables, poems, legends about heroes, and humorous stories. The stories that are best known in the English-speaking world—those of Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and his Magic Lamp, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves—do not appear in all editions of  Thousand and One Nights. Thousand and One Nights The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. |  2012 |  Copyright Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights, series of anonymous stories in Arabic, considered as an entity to be among the classics of world literature. The cohesive plot device concerns the efforts of Scheherezade, or Sheherazade, to keep her husband, King Shahryar (or Schriyar), from killing her by entertaining him with a tale a night for 1,001 nights. The best known of these stories are those of Ali Baba, Sinbad the Sailor, and Aladdin. Although many of the stories are set in India, their origins are unknown and have been the subject of intensive scholarly investigation. The corpus began to be collected about the year 1000. At first the title was merely indicative of a large number of stories; later editors dutifully provided editions with the requisite 1,001 tales. The present form of  Thousand and One Nights  is thought to be native to Persia or one of the Arabic-speaking countries, but includes stories from a number of different countries and no doubt reflects diverse source material. The first European edition was a free translation by Abbe Antoine Galland into French (1704–17). Most subsequent French, German, and English versions lean heavily upon Galland. Among the English translations include the expurgated edition of E. W. Lane (1840), with excellent and copious notes; the unexpurgated edition by Sir Richard Burton in 16 volumes (1885–88); that of John Payne in 9 volumes (1882–84); Powys Mathers’s translation from the French text of J. C. Mardrus (rev. ed. , 4 vol. , 1937); and that of Husain Haddawy (2 vol. , 1990, 1995). Note: This file is also available as a  Word document. Acknowledgements: Al-Muntazir Madrasah, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. IMPORTANCE OF THE HOLY QUR’AAN The first lesson to be learned by all students is about the importance of the Holy Qur’aan. The Qur’aan is the Book of Allah  subhaanahu wa ta‘aalaa. Every word in the Qur’aan has come from Allah. That is why we say that it is a Holy Book. The words in the Qur’aan were sent by Allah to Prophet Muhammad  sallal-laahu ‘alayhi wa-aalihi wa sallam. The Prophet (s) received the words of Allah through angel Jibra’eel. This Qur’aan is a Holy Book that was not written by anyone but sent by Allah to Prophet Muhammad (s) through Jibra’eel. 1. It is the most truthful speech: Prophet Muhammad (s) regularly read the words of Allah to Muslims around him. These Muslims were very pleased and excited to receive the words of Allah. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  The most truthful speech, the most eloquent advice, and the greatest stories are in the Book of Allah. The Muslims listened carefully to what the Prophet read, memorized the sentences and passages of the Qur’aan, recited them regularly and followed the teachings of the Qur’aan. In order to preserve the words of Allah the Prophet appointed special people known as â€Å"Scribes of the Qur’aan† to write down the words of Allah. 2. It is in original language: Prophet Muhammad (s) was an Arab and the majority of people in Mecca and Medina spoke Arabic. Therefore the Qur’aan was sent in Arabic. Arabic is written from right to left. It is better to learn to read the Qur’aan in its original language. Therefore, we will put efforts to learn Qur’aan written in Arabic instead of simply reading its translation in other languages. . The Holy Qur’aan contains Allah’s message to all people. It tells people how to act correctly. It guides us to a correct way of life in this world. The Book of Allah also talks about life after death. It tells us that Allah has prepared Paradise for good people and Hell for bad people. The Qur’aan encourages the worship of only one God Who creates and provides for them. The Book forbids people from evil and condemns those who do wrong. It contains stories of the past Prophets and the examples of bad and good people. People are advised in the Qur’aan to be good to others and respect them. It teaches people to live in peace and harmony. 4. Qur’aan brings happiness in this world and the Hereafter. Following the Qur’aan brings happiness in this world and the world after death. The Prophet (s) said:If you desire the life of the fortunate, the death of a martyr, the salvation on the Day of Regret and the shade on the Day of Extreme Heat, then you should study the Qur’aan because it is the word of the Merciful, a sanctuary from Shaytaan and a causes the tilting of the Balance. In another Hadith we read that the Prophet (s) has said:  The recitor of the Qur’an will be spared from the calamities of the Hereafter. 5. It is the only Divine book that has remained unchanged. Allah sent the Qur’aan to His Prophet. A book sent by Allah to people is known as a Divine Book or a Heavenly Book. Other Divine Books were also sent to previous prophets. These are: Suhoof to Prophet Ibraheem  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam; Zaboor to Prophet Dawood  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam;  Tawraah to Prophet Moosaa  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam; and  Injeel to Prophet ‘Eisaa  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam. The difference between the Qur’aan and past revealed books is that the Qur’aan is the only Divine Book that has remained unaltered. The Qur’aan we have with us contains exactly the same message that was sent to Prophet Muhammad by Allah through Jibra’eel. 6. Our supplications get answered  if we were to pray after reading the Holy Qur’aan. The Prophet (s) said:  One who starts the Qur’an and finishes it, Allah will grant him one answered supplication. It also helps in strengthening our faith. Imam Ali (a) said:  Ã‚  Reciting the Qur’an plants the eed of faith. 7. The Qur’aan is the best companion. It can be of great help when a child or adult is feeling lonely. Imam Ali Zaynul ‘Aabideen (a) said:  If all who live between the East and West perish, I will have no fear as long as I have the Qur’an with me. 8. Students get wise  when they start reading the Qur’aan in their childhood. Prophet Muhammad (s ) said:  Whoever reads the Qur’an before becoming Baaligh, has indeed been given wisdom as a child. The Holy Book is the best intellectual treasure a student can have. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  The Qur’an is a wealth with which there is no poverty, and without which there is no wealth. On the other hand not caring to read and study the Qur’aan is a great loss. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  Surely the person in whose heart lacks the trace of the Qur’an is like a ruined house. 9. Muslims read the Qur’aan to understand the true teachings of Islam. Prophet Muhammad (s) left the Holy Book and the Ahlul Bayt (a) as the most important legacy for Muslims after him. He said:  I leave tow weighty things among you: The Book of Allah and my family – the Ahlul Bayt. Indeed these two will never separate until they reach me near the pool of Kawthar. 10. All Muslims recite some Soorahs in their prayers. However, it is good to memorize more Soorahs and read them in Salaat. Imam Muhammad Al-Baaqir (a) said:  Whoever recites the Qur’aan while standing in his prayer, Allah will bestow on him a hundred blessings for every letter; and whoever recites it while sitting in his prayer, Allah will reward him fifty blessings for every letter; and whoever recites it outside of his prayer, Allah will grant him ten blessings for every letter. 1. The Qur’aan is a cure to mental and spiritual diseases: Imam Hasan al-‘Askaree (a) said:  The Messenger of Allah (s) said: I advice you to the Qur’aan since it is the beneficial cure, the blessed medicine, the protection (‘Isma) for he who holds fast to it, and the salvation for he who follows it. Neither does it cause crookedness so that it departs (from the truth) nor does it deviate so that it causes trouble. Its marvels do not come to end and the vastness of refutations does not wear it. RESPECT AND RIGHTS OF THE HOLY QUR’AAN Now that we know that the Holy Qur’aan is not an ordinary book, but a Divine Book sent by Allah for the guidance of all people, we must show respect to it. Here are some of the points we need to remember. 1. A part of the Qur’aan carries the same respect as the entire Qur’aan. Allah says:  When the Qur’aan is recited, listen to  it (7:204). We know that when recitation takes place it is always of a part of the Qur’aan. Even then Allah uses the word Qur’aan for the part that is being recited. Therefore, if you have a Siparah, a binder or a booklet that contains Soorahs and passages from the Qur’aan, you treat it like a Qur’aan. . The Qur’aan should always be carried with proper care. When your Madrasah bag contains the Qur’aan, or a part of it, take extra care of the bag. Keep the bag slowly on the desk or floor instead of letting it fall on its own. Use both hands to remove the Qur’aan from your bag, kis s the cover of the Qur’aan, place it slowly on a desk (or on a wooden carrier specially built for holding the Qur’aan) and open the pages gently. 3. When the Qur’aan is being recited, listen to it and be attentive (7:204). If you are busy with something else then at least do not disturb the recitation by talking, for example, or making noise. There is reward for listening to the Qur’aan. Imam Ali Zaynul ‘Aabideen (a) said:  Whoever listens to a letter of the book of Allah, the Glorious and Almighty, without even reading it, Allah will write down for him one good deed, forgive a sin, and raise him a degree. It was the practice of unbelievers in Mecca to make a lot of noise so that others could not listen to the Qur’aan (41:26). Do not be like them and instead lend your ears to the Qur’aan and give it respect. We often wish that God would talk to us. One way to achieve this is by reading the Qur’aan. Prophet Muhammad (s): said:  Lo! Whoever has longing for Allah should listen to the word of Allah! Also, if you wish to talk to God then do Tilaawa. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  Whenever one of you would like to talk to his Lord, he should read the Qur’an. 4. The Qur’aan should be recited regularly. It is disrespect to keep the Holy Qur’aan unread. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  Brighten your homes with reciting Qur’aan; do not turn them into graves. Surely the house in which a lot of recitation takes place enjoys many blessings and the members benefit from it. Such a household shines for the inhabitants of Heaven as stars shine to the inhabitants of the earth. On the Day of Judgment the Prophet will complain to Allah about some Muslims who had abandoned the Qur’aan (25:30). Another Hadith of the Prophet (s) says:  Indeed hearts rust in the same way irons rust. He was asked: â€Å"What will polish the hearts? † The Prophet answered:  Reading the Qur’an. The more Qur’aan we read the better it is. We should discipline ourselves to read a good portion of Qur’aan daily. Imam Ali (a) said:  He who recites 100 verses daily from the Book in the order it is in, Allah writes for him the reward equal to all the good actions of every one on this earth. Shaytaan would like us not to read, understand and study the Qur’aan. Let us fight him with all our strength and faith. Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) said:  Ã‚  There is nothing more unpleasant to Shaytaan than to see a man reading the Qur’an to gain insight. 5. Children should get familiarized with the Qur’aan early in their lives. Imam as-Saadiq (AS) said:  He who recites Qur’aan while he is young, Qur’aan mixes with his flesh and his blood, and Allah places him amongst the blessed and the chosen righteous. On the Day of Judgment, Qur’aan shall become his defender and  [pray for him a handsome reward. 6. It is the right and respect of the Qur’aan that it should be followed. Imam Ja‘far Saadiq (a) said:  Ã‚  Lo! One, who learns the Qur’aan, teaches it and practices according to it, I will guide and lead him to Paradise. 7. It is also the right and respect of the Qur’aan that those who have the knowledge o f the Qur’aan should teach it to others. This is among the noblest acts. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  The best of you is he who learns the Qur’an and teaches it. 8. Take the interpretations of the Qur’aan from the Holy Prophet (s) and the Imams from his family, i. e. the Ahlul Bayt (a). Imam Hasan al-‘Askaree quoting Prophet Muhammad said:  Recite it (i. e. the Qur’aan) as Allah gives you ten rewards for each letter that you recite from it. Then the Imam (a) said:  Do you know who really holds fast to it and reaches to such honor and reward? He is the person who takes Qur’aan and its interpretation from us Ahlul-Bayt (a) or from the deputies that we send to our followers, and takes its (interpretation) neither from the opinions of those who argue (on the speech of Allah) nor form the analogy  of  those who compare (different parts of the speech of Allah). . Once you have completed reading your lesson or referring to the Qur’aan then close it gently instead of leaving it open. 2. Do not put another book or any weight above the Qur’aan. The Holy Book should always be kept on the top in a pile of books. 3. It is Haraam (forbidden) to make Najaasaat (impure things like blood and urine) touch the Qur’aan. In the event wher e the Qur’aan becomes Najis, for instance if it falls in Najis water, it is Waajib (obligatory) to purify it (make it Taahir). 4. Old and worn out copies of the Qur’aan should be disposed in safe places. This includes sending them for recycling, burying them in the earth or casting in rivers. *  Ã‚  *  Ã‚  *  Ã‚  * * MANNERS OF RECITING THE HOLY QUR’AAN By now we know that the Qur’aan is a special book and deserves respect. Now let us look at some of the manners of reciting the Qur’aan. It is the right of the Tilaawa (recitation of the Qur’aan) that we follow the rules when reciting the Qur’aan. 1. Perform Wudhoo before you prepare to read the Qur’aan. Allah says:  None can touch it (the Qur’aan) save the purified ones  (56:79). Once Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) asked his son Ismaa‘eel to read the Qur’aan. The latter said that he was not in Wudhoo. The Imam said in that case he could recite it but should not touch the writings of the Qur’aan. Therefore, it is advisable to  use a stick or pen to point to the words  or sentences of the Qur’aan you are reading if you are not in Wudhoo. 2. Read Du‘aa before Tilaawa. Reading of the Du‘aa helps to keep our focus and reminds us of what we need to take from the Holy Book. Ma‘soomeen (a) have recommended a number of Du‘aas. The Du‘aa taught by Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) appears in this booklet with Qur’aan lessons. 3. Always say  A‘oodhubillaahi minash shaytaanir rajeem  ( ) when you begin reading the Qur’aan. It means: I seek refuge in Allah from the cursed Shaytaan. This is what Allah instructs us to do in Aayah 16:98. 4. Next say  Bismillaahir rahmaanir raheem  ( )  The meaning of this phrase is: In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Whenever Imam Moosaa Al-Kaazim (a) wished to mak e a point to Haroon Rasheed using Aayaat from the Qur’aan, the Imam would begin with  A‘oodhubillaah . . . followed by  Bismillaah . . . 5. Sit facing Qiblaah when reciting the Qur’aan. Please note that this is the best direction to face. However where it may be difficult or impossible to face Qiblaah when reading the Qur’aan (for example if your desk is facing another direction) then it is all right not to face the Qiblaah. 6. Recite the Qur’aan with Tarteel  as instructed by Allah in Aayah 73:4. This means that we should recite the Qur’aan in a good voice with rhythm instead of plain reading. 7. Recite the Qur’aan slowly  Allah said to the Prophet  do not move your tongue with it (Qur’aan) to make haste therein  (75:16). The aayaat of the Qur’aan should be recited in slow tones with each word being pronounced clearly. The Prophet (s) advised Muslims not be concerned about finishing a Soorah when reciting the Qur’aan. 8. Be Humble when reciting the Qur’aan. The Prophet (s) says that the best recitor is he who is humble when reciting the Qur’aan and realizes his own insignificance. Some people exhibit their insignificance and the awe of talking to Allah through weeping. This is a good sign. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:Eyes that weep when reciting the Qur’an will be shining with delight on the Day of Resurrection. 9. Try to understand the recitation. Holy Qur’aan is a book of Guidance (2:2). It is necessary for us to understand the message Allah sent all people through Prophet Muhammad (s). 10. Read from the Qur’aan by looking at the writings instead of reciting from your memory. In a Hadith from one of our Imams it is said that mere looking at the writings of the Qur’aan carries reward. 11. Interact with the Qur’aan. Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) says that it is important to react to the aayaat of the Qur’aan when reciting it. When we come across aayaat on Paradise, Mercy and Grace of Allah, Good Outcome in the hereafter, we should hope for these in our hearts. On the other hand if we are reading aayaat that warn us about the punishment, fire, Hell, etc. we should pray to be saved from these. 12. Open your heart and mind to the Qur’aan and ponder over what you read. Allah often invites us to think and ponder over the contents of the Qur’aan. In 47:24 Allah says:  Do they not then think deeply in the Qur’aan, or are their hearts locked up? 13. Perform Sajdah where required to do so  In the entire Qur’aan there are 15 places where performing of Sajdah is required. At 4 places it is Waajib (obligatory) to do Sajdah if we were to read or listen to these sections of the Qur’aan. For the rest of the places it is Mustahab (recommended) to do Sajdah. 14. Say  Sadqallaahul ‘Aliyyul ‘Azeem  ( ) every time you end a recitation of the Qur’aan. The meaning of this phrase is: Allah, the Sublime, the Great, is truthful in what He has said 15. Read one of the Du‘aas after Tilaawa. The Ma‘soomeen have taught a number of Du‘aas, from these two have been included with Qur’aan lessons. In these Du‘aas, amongst other things, we pray to the Almighty to enlighten us through the Qur’aan and make us follow the teachings of the Qur’aan. THE HOLY QURAN: Islam appeared in the form of a book: the Quran. Muslims, consider the Quran (sometimes spelled â€Å"Koran†) to be the Word of God as transmitted by the Angel Gabriel, in the Arabic language, through the Prophet Muhammad. The Muslim view, moreover, is that the Quran supersedes earlier revelations; it is regarded as their summation and completion. It is the final revelation, as Muhammad is regarded as the final prophet – ‘the Seal of the Prophets. † In a very real sense the Quran is the mentor of millions of Muslims, Arab and non-Arab alike; it shapes their everyday life, anchors them to a unique system of law, and inspires them by its guiding principles. Written in noble language, this Holy Text has done more than move multitudes to tears and ecstasy; it has also, for almost fourteen hundred years, illuminated the lives of Muslims with its eloquent message of uncompromising monotheism, human dignity, righteous living, individual responsibility, and social justice. For countless millions, consequently, it has been the single most important force in guiding their religious, social, and cultural lives. Indeed, the Quran is the cornerstone on which the edifice of Islamic civilization has been built. The text of the Quran was delivered orally by the Prophet Muhammad to his followers as it was revealed to him. The first verses were revealed to him in or about 610, and the last revelation dates from the last year of his life, 632. His followers at first committed the Quran to memory and then, as instructed by him, to writing. Although the entire contents of the Quran, the placement of its verses, and the arrangement of its chapters date back to the Prophet, as long as he lived he continued to receive revelations. Consequently, the Holy Text could only be collected as a single corpus – â€Å"between the two covers† – after the death of Muhammad. This is exactly what happened. After the battle of al-Yamamah in 633, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, later to become the second caliph, suggested to Abu Bakr, the first caliph, that because of the grievous loss of life in that battle, there was a very real danger of losing the Quran, enshrined as it was in the memories of the faithful and in uncollated fragments. Abu Bakr recognized the danger and entrusted the task of gathering the revelations to Zayd ibn Thabit, who as the chief scribe of the Prophet was the person to whom Muhammad frequently dictated the revelations in his lifetime. With great difficulty, the task was carried out and the first complete manuscript compiled from â€Å"bits of parchment, thin white stones – ostracae – leafless palm branches, and the memories of men. Later, during the time of ‘Uthman, the third caliph, a final, authorized text was prepared and completed in 651, and this has remained the text in use ever since. The contents of the Quran differ in substance and arrangement from the Old and New Testaments. Instead of presenting a straight historical narrative, as do the Gospels and the historical books of the Old Testament, the Quran treats, in allusive style, spiritual and practical as well as historical matters. The Quran is divided into 114 surahs, or chapters, and the surahs are conventionally assigned to two broad categories: those revealed at Mecca and those revealed at Medina. The surahs revealed at Mecca – at the beginning of Muhammad’s mission – tend to be short and to stress, in highly moving language, the eternal themes of the unity of God, the necessity of faith, the punishment of those who stray from the right path, and the Last Judgment, when all man’s actions and beliefs will be judged. The surahs revealed at Medina are longer, often deal in detail with specific legal, social, or political situations, and sometimes can only be properly understood with a full knowledge of the circumstances in which they were revealed All the surahs are divided into ayahs or verses and, for purposes of pedagogy and recitation, the Quran as a whole is divided into thirty parts, which in turn are divided into short divisions of nearly equal length, to facilitate study and memorization. The surahs hemselves are of varying length, ranging from the longest, Surah 2, with 282 verses, to the shortest, Surahs 103, 108, and 110, each of which has only three. With some exceptions the surahs are arranged in the Quran in descending order of length, with the longest at the beginning and the shortest at the end. The major exception to this arrangement is the opening surah, â€Å"al-Fatihah,† which contains seven verses and which serves as an introduction to the entire revelation: In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds; The Merciful, the Compassionate; Master of the Day of Judgment; Thee only do we worship, and Thee alone we ask for help. Guide us in the straight path, The path of those whom Thou hast favored; not the path of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray. Non-Muslims are often struck by the range of styles found in the Quran. Passages of impassioned beauty are no less common than vigorous narratives. The sublime â€Å"Verse of the Throne† is perhaps one of the most famous: God – There is no god but He,   The Living. the Everlasting; Slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep; To Him belongs all that is In the heavens and the earth; Who is there that can intercede with Him Save by His leave? He knows what lies before them And what is after them, Nor do they encompass anything of His knowledge Except such as He wills; His Throne extends over the heavens and earth; The preserving of them wearies Him not; He is the Most High, the All-Glorious. Muslims regard the Quran as untranslatable; the language in which it was revealed – Arabic – is inseparable from its message and Muslims everywhere, o matter what their native tongue, must learn Arabic to read the Sacred Book and to perform their worship. The Quran of course is available in many languages, but these versions are regarded as interpretations rather than translations – partly because the Arabic language, extraordinarily concise and allusive, is impossible to translate in a mechanical, word-for-word way. The inimitability of the Quran has crystalli zed in the Muslim view of i’jaz or â€Å"impossibility,† which holds that the style of the Quran, being divine, cannot be imitated: any attempt to do so is doomed to failure. It must also be remembered that the Quran was originally transmitted orally to the faithful and that the Holy Text is not meant to be read only in silence. From the earliest days it has always been recited aloud or, more accurately, chanted. As a result, several traditional means of chanting, or intoning, the Quran were found side by side. These methods carefully preserved the elaborate science of reciting the Quran – with all its intonations and its cadence and punctuation. As the exact pronunciation was important – and learning it took years – special schools were founded to be sure that no error would creep in as the traditional chanting methods were handed down. It is largely owing to the existence of these traditional methods of recitation that the text of the Quran was preserved without error. As the script in which the Quran was first written down indicated only the consonantal skeleton of the words, oral recitation was an essential element in the transmission of the text. Because the circumstances of each revelation were thought necessary to correct interpretation, the community, early in the history of Islam, concluded that it was imperative to gather as many traditions as possible about the life and actions of the Prophet so that the Quran might be more fully understood. These traditions not only provided the historical context for many of the surahs – thus contributing to their more exact explication – but also contained a wide variety of subsidiary information on the practice, life, and legal rulings of the Prophet and his companions. This material became the basis for what is called the sunnah, or â€Å"practice† of the Prophet – the deeds, utterances, and taqrir (unspoken approval) of Muhammad. Together with the Quran, the sunnah, as embodied in the canonical collections of traditions, the hadith, became the basis for the shari’ah, the sacred law of Islam. Unlike Western legal systems, the shari’ah makes no distinction between religious and civil matters; it is the codification of God’s Law, and it concerns itself with every aspect of social, political, economic, and religious life. Islamic law is thus different from any other legal system; it differs from canon law in that it is not administered by a church hierarchy; in Islam there is nothing that corresponds to a â€Å"church† in the Christian sense. Instead, there is the ummah – the community of the believers – whose cohesion is guaranteed by the sacred law. Every action of the pious Muslim, therefore, is determined by the Quran, by precedents set by the Prophet, and by the practice of the early community of Islam as enshrined in the shari’ah. No description, however, can fully capture the overwhelming importance of the Quran to Muslims. Objectively, it is the central fact of the Islamic faith, the Word of God, the final and complete revelation, the foundation and framework of Islamic law, and the source of Islamic thought, language, and action. It is the essence of Islam. Yet it is, in the deeply personal terms of a Muslim, something more as well. In innumerable, almost indescribable ways, it is also the central fact of Muslim life. To a degree almost incomprehensible in the West it shapes and colors broadly, specifically, and totally the thoughts, emotions, and values of the devout Muslim’s life from birth to death. ARABIC LITERATURE: The Quran, the primary document of the Islamic faith, is the first Arabic book. Its style, at once vigorous, allusive, and concise, deeply influenced later compositions in Arabic, as it continues to color the mode of expression of native speakers of Arabic, Christian as well as Muslim, both in writing and in conversation. The Quran also largely determined the course of Arabic literature. The earliest Arabic prose came into being not from literary motives, but to serve religious and practical needs, above all the need to fully understand the Islamic revelation and the circumstances of the first Muslim community in the Hijaz. The sayings and actions of the Prophet and his Companions were collected and preserved, at first by memory and then by writing, to be finally collected and arranged by such men as al-Bukhari and Muslim in the ninth century. This material, the hadith, not only provided the basic texts from which Islamic law was elaborated, but also formed the raw material for historians of the early Muslim community. Since each hadith, or â€Å"saying,† is a first-person narrative, usually by an eyewitness of the event described, they have an immediacy and freshness that has come down unimpaired through the centuries. The personalities of the narrators – Abu Bakr, Umar, Aishah, and a host of others are just as vivid as the events described, for the style of each hadith is very personal. The hadith also determined the characteristic form of such works as Ibn Ishaq’s Life of the Messenger of God, originally written in the middle of the eighth century. In this book, hadith dealing with the life of the Prophet are arranged in chronological order, and the comments of the author are kept to a minimum. Events are seen through the eyes of the people who witnessed them; three or four versions of the same event are often given, and in each case the â€Å"chain of transmission† of the hadith is given, so that the reader may judge its authenticity. During Umayyad times, a number of historians wrote monographs on specific historical, legal, and religious questions, and in each case these authors seem to have adhered to the hadith method of composition. Although few of the works of these writers have survived in their entirety, enough has been preserved by later incorporation in such vast works as the Annals of al-Tabari to give us an idea not only of their method of composition, but also of their wide-ranging interests. The practice of prefacing a chain of authorities to each hadith led to the compilation of vast biographical dictionaries, like the Book of Classes of the early ninth century author Ibn Said, which includes a biography of the Prophet and a great deal of information on notable personalities in Mecca and Medina during his lifetime. Works such as this allowed readers to identify and judge the veracity of transmitters of hadith; later, the content of biographical dictionaries was broadened to include poets, writers, eminent reciters of the Quran, scientists, and the like. These biographical dictionaries are often lively reading, and are a mine of information about social and political circumstances in the Islamic world. The spread of Islam naturally found chroniclers, such as al-Waqidi, who wrote in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, and al-Baladhuri, who composed his well known Book of the Conquests in the ninth century. These books, like the hadith, were written for practical motives. Al-Waqidi was interested in establishing the exact chronology of the spread of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and adjoining areas, while al-Baladhuri was interested in legal and tax problems connected with the settlement of new lands. Their books nevertheless are classics of their kind and, aside from containing much interesting information, they have passages of great descriptive power. By the ninth century, the method of compiling history from hadith and carefully citing the authorities for each tradition – a process which had resulted in books of unwieldy length – was abandoned by some authors, like al-Dinawari and al-Ya’qubi, who omitted the chains of transmitters and combined hadith to produce a narrative. The result was greater readability and smaller compass, at the sacrifice of richness and complexity. The works of al-Dinawari and al-Ya’qubi, unlike those of their predecessors, aimed to entertain as well as instruct; they are â€Å"literary† productions. This form of light history reached its apogee in the tenth century in al-Mas’udi’s brilliant and entertaining Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, a comprehensive encyclopedia of history, geography, and literature. The literary productions of these men would not, however, have been possible without the careful collections of historical hadith made by their predecessors. Just as the writing of history began from practical rather than literary motives, so the collection and preservation of Arabic poetry was undertaken by scholars with, at first, little interest in its artistic merit. The linguists and exegetes of Kufa and Basra began collecting this poetry in the eighth century because of the light it threw on unusual expressions and grammatical structures in the Quran and the hadith. Editions and commentaries were prepared of the poems of ‘Antarah, Imru al-Qays, and many others, and thus the works of the early poets were preserved for later generations. The Quran a part, poetry has always been considered the highest expression of literary art among the Arabs. Long before the coming of Islam, Bedouin poets had perfected the forms of panegyric, satire, and elegy. Their poetry obeys strict conventions, both in form and content, which indicates that it must have had a long period of development before it was finally committed to writing by scholars. The principal form used by the desert poets was the qasidah or ode, a poem of variable length rhyming in the last syllable of each line. The qasidah begins with a description of the abandoned encampment of the poet’s beloved and goes on to an account of his anguish at her absence and his consuming love for her. The poet then describes an arduous journey across the desert nd ends the qasidah with an appeal to the generosity of his host. Although the subject matter is almost invariable, the language is very complex and of great precision. In the Hijaz during the first century of Islam, contemporary with the first hadith scholars, a group of poets broke with the past and introduced new forms and subjects. Men like ‘Umar ibn Abi Rabi’ah wrote realistic and urbane verse, and a school of poetry which expressed the themes of Platonic love grew up around the poet Jamil ibn Muiammar, better known as Jamil al-‘Udhri. The lives and works of these poets of the Umayyad period are preserved in the entertaining tenth-century anthology by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, the Book of Songs. The Umayyad court in Damascus patronized poets and musicians. It was also the scene of the development of the type of Arabic literature called adab. Adab is usually translated as â€Å"belles-lettres,† which is slightly misleading. This literature, at least in its inception, was created to serve the practical end of educating the growing class of government ministers in the Arabic language, manners and deportment, history, and statecraft. Works in Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Greek, and Syriac began to find their way into Arabic at this time. ‘Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahya al-Katib, an Umayyad official, and the creator of this genre, defined its aims as follows: â€Å"Cultivate the Arabic language so that you may speak correctly; develop a handsome script which will add luster to your writings; learn the poetry of the Arabs by heart; familiarize yourself with unusual ideas and expressions; read the history of the Arabs and the Persians, and remember their great deeds. ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Muqaffa’, a contemporary of ‘Abd al-Ham id ibn Yahya, translated the history of the ancient kings of Persia into Arabic, as well as Kalilah wa-Dimnah, an Indian book of advice for princes cast in the form of animal fables. His works are the earliest surviving examples of Arabic art prose and are still used as models in schools throughout the Middle East. By the ninth century, Arabic literature had entered its classical age. The various genres had been defined – adab, history, Quranic exegesis, geography, biography, poetry, satire, and many more. Al-Jahiz was perhaps the greatest stylist of the age, and one of the most original personalities. He wrote more than two hundred books, on every conceivable subject; he was critical, rational, and always amusing. His Book of Animals is the earliest Arabic treatise on zoology and contains very modern-sounding discussions of such things as animal mimetism and biological adaptation. He wrote one of the earliest and best treatises on rhetoric and a large number of amusing essays. By the time of his death at the age of ninety-six he had shown that Arabic prose was capable of handling any subject with ease. The most gifted of al-Jahiz’s contemporaries was probably Ibn Qutaybah, also a writer of encyclopedic learning and an excellent stylist. His Book of Knowledge, a history of the world beginning with the creation, is the earliest work of its kind and later had many imitators. The tenth century witnessed the creation of a new form in Arabic literature, the maqamat. This was the title of a work by al-Hamadhani, called Badi’ al-Zaman, â€Å"The Wonder of the Age. His Maqamat (â€Å"Sessions†) is a series of episodes written in rhymed prose concerning the life of Abu al-Fath al-Iskandari, a sort of confidence trickster, who takes on a different personality in each story and always succeeds in bilking his victims. These stories are witty and packed with action, and were immediately popular. Al-Hamadhani was imitated by al-Hariri a hundred year s later. Al-Hariri was a linguistic virtuoso, and his Maqamat is filled with obscure words, alliteration, puns, and wild metaphors. He too was extremely popular, and many learned commentaries were written on his Maqamat. This purely Arab form can most closely be compared with the Spanish picaresque novels, which it may have influenced. Rhymed prose, which had come to be used even in government documents, was employed by Abu al-‘Ala al-Ma’arri in his Message of Forgiveness, one of the best known of Arabic prose works. Al-Ma’arri lived in the eleventh century, leading an ascetic life in his native Syrian village. Blind from the age of four, he possessed a prodigious memory and great intellectual curiosity and skepticism. The Message of Forgiveness is cast in the form of a journey to paradise; the narrator there interrogates the scholars and poets of the past regarding their lives and works, receiving surprising and often ironic responses. The book is an extended critique of literature and philology, and represents a high point of classical Arabic culture. One of the other great figures of late classical literature was the poet al-Mutanabbi, whose skill in handling the complex meters of Arabic poetry was probably unsurpassed. His verbal brilliance has always been admired by Arab critics, although it is difficult for those whose native tongue is not Arabic to appreciate it fully. The period between the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258 and the nineteenth century is generally held to be a period of literary as well as political decline for the Arabs. It is true that during these five hundred years Arabic writers were more preoccupied with the preservation of their literary heritage than with the development of new forms and ideas. This is the age of encyclopedias, commentaries, and lexicons. Faced with the massive destruction of books by the invasions of Genghis Khan and Hulagu and later of Tamerlane, scholars compiled digests and abridgments of works that had survived in order to ensure their continued existence. There were also some original works, however. Ibn Battutah, the greatest traveler of the Middle Ages, lived in the fourteenth century, and his Travel provide a fascinating picture of the Muslim world, from the islands of the Indian Ocean to Timbuktu. Ibn Khaldun, like Ibn Battutah a native of North Africa, lived in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. His Prolegomena is a work of brilliance and originality; the author analyzes human society in terms of general sociological laws and gives a lucid account of the factors that contribute to the rise and decline of civilizations. Ibn Khaldun’s style is innovative, simple, and very personal, and perfectly suited to the expression of his often difficult ideas. This post classical period also saw the composition of popular romances, such as the Romance of ‘Antar, based on the life of the famous pre-Islamic poet; the Romance of the Bani Hilal, a cycle of stories and poems based on the migration of an Arabian tribe to North Africa in the eleventh century; and many more. These romances could be heard recited in coffee shops from Aleppoto Marrakesh until very recently. The most famous popular work of all, The Thousand and One Nights, assumed its present form during the fifteenth century. A revival of Arabic literature began in the nineteenth century, and coincided with the first efforts of Arabic speaking nations to assert their independence of Ottoman rule. Napoleon, during his brief occupation of Egypt in the late eighteenth century, introduced a printing press with fonts of Arabic type, and Muhammad ‘Ali, ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, initiated a series of projects to modernize Egypt. He encouraged the use of Arabic in schools and government institutions, and established a printing press. Selected Egyptian students were sent to study in France, and on their return assigned to undertake translations of Western technical manuals on agriculture, engineering, mathematics, and military tactics. These works, together with many of the classics of Arabic literature, were printed at the government press at Bulaq and had a profound impact on intellectuals in the Arab East. Another factor in the literary revival was the swift growth of journalism in Lebanon and Egypt. Starting in the late 1850s, newspapers were soon available through the Middle East. By 1900 well over a hundred and fifty newspapers and journals were being published. These journals had a great influence on the development and modernization of the written Arabic language; their stress on substance rather than style did much to simplify Arabic prose and bring it within the comprehension of everyone. One of the first leaders of the Arabic literary renaissance was the Lebanese writer and scholar Butrus al-Bustani, whose dictionary and encyclopedia awakened great interest in the problems of expressing modern Western ideas in the Arabic language. His nephew Sulayman translated Homer’s Iliad into Arabic, thus making one of the first expressions of Western literature accessible to the Arabic-reading public. Other writers, such as the Egyptian Mustafa al-Manfaluti, adapted French romantic novels to the tastes of the Arab public, as well as writing elegant essays on a variety of themes. The historical novel, in the hands of Jurji Zaydan, proved immensely popular, perhaps because of the intense interest Arabs have always had in their past, and because of the novelty of a new form. But the first Arabic novel that can rank with European productions is Muhammad Husayn Haykal’s Zaynab, set in Egypt and dealing with local problems. Perhaps the greatest figure in modern Arabic literature is Taha Husayn. Blind from an early age, Taha Husayn wrote movingly of his life and beloved Egypt in his autobiography, al-Ayyam, â€Å"The Days. † Taha Husayn was a graduate of both al-Azhar and the Sorbonne, and his voluminous writings on Arabic literature contributed a new critique of this vast subject. The novel was not the only new form introduced to the Arabic-reading public. The drama, first in the form of translations of Western work, then of original compositions, was pioneered by Ahmad Shawqi and came to maturity in the hands of Tawfiq al-Hakim. Tawfiq al-Hakim’s long career and devotion to the theater did much to make this one of the liveliest arts of the Middle East. The history of modern Arabic poetry, with its many schools and contending styles, is almost impossible to summarize. Traditional forms and subjects were challenged by ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad, Mahmud Shukri, and Ibrahim al-Mazini, who strove to introduce nineteenth-century European themes and techniques into Arabic, not always with success. Lebanese poets were in the forefront of modernist verse, and one of them, Gibran Kahlil Gibran, proved very popular in the West. Poets are now experimenting with both old and new techniques, although discussions of form have given way to concern for content. The exodus of Palestinians from their native land has become a favorite theme, often movingly handled. In Saudi Arabia, it was not until well into the twentieth century that literary movements in neighboring lands made themselves felt. Poetry, of course, has been cultivated in Arabia since the pre-Islamic period, and it has lately been influenced by new forms and subjects. Hasan al-Qurashi, Tahir Zamakhshari, Hasan Faqi, and Mahrum (the pen name of Amir ‘Abd Allah al-Faysal) have won renown for their poetry throughout the Arab world. Hasan Faqi’s poetry is introspective and philosophical, while the verse of the three others is lyrical and romantic. Ghazi al-Gosaibi is distinguished by a fresh, fecund imagination that expresses itself in both Arabic and English verse. Two novels by the late Hamid al-Damanhuri have been well received. They are Thaman al-Tadhiyah, â€Å"The Price of Sacrifice,† and Wa-Marrat al-Ayyam, â€Å"And the Days Went By. † With the rapid increase in education and communications, presses are now beginning to publish more and more works by writers, and it can certainly be expected that the great social changes that are taking place will eventually be reflected in equally far-reaching developments in the Arabic literature. Introduction â€Å"Read in the Name of your Lord†. [1] These were the first few words of the Qur’an revealed to the   Prophet Muhammad over 1400 years ago. Muhammad, who was known to have been in retreat and   meditation in a cave outside Mecca [2], had received the first few words of a book that would have a   tremendous impact on the world of Arabic liter ature. [3] Not being known to have composed any piece   of poetry and not having any special rhetorical gifts, [4] Muhammed had just received the beginning of a   book that would deal with matters of belief, legislation, international law, olitics, ritual, spirituality, and   economics [5] in an ‘entirely new literary form’. Armstrong states, â€Å"It is as though Muhammad had created an entirely new literary form†¦Without this experience of the   Koran, it is extremely unlikely that Islam would have taken root. † [6] This unique literary form was the cause of the dramatic intellectual revival of desert Arabs [7], and after   thirteen years of the first revelation, it became the only reference for a new state in Medina. [8] This new   form of speech, the Qur’an, became the sole source of the new civilisation’s political, philosophical,   and spiritual outlook. It is well known amongst Muslim and Non-Muslim scholars that the Qur’anic discourse cannot be   described as any of the known forms of Arabic speech; namely Poetry and Prose. [9] Taha Husayn, [10] a prominent Egyptian Litterateur, during the course of a public lecture summarised   how the Qur’an achieves this unique form: â€Å"But you know that the Qur’an is not prose and that it is not verse either. It is rather Qur’an, and it cannot   be called by any other name but this. It is not verse, and that is clear; for it does not bind itself to the   bonds of verse. And it is not prose, for it is bound by bonds peculiar to itself, not found elsewhere;   some of the binds are related to the endings of its verses and some to that musical sound which is all   its own. It is therefore neither verse nor prose, but it is â€Å"a Book whose verses have been perfected the   expounded, from One Who is Wise, All-Aware. † We cannot therefore say its prose, and its text itself is   not verse. It has been one of a kind, and nothing like it has ever preceded or followed it. † [11] Any expression of the Arabic language falls into the literary forms of Prose and Poetry. There are other   ‘sub’ forms that fall into the above categories. Kahin, which is a form of rhymed prose, is one of these   ‘sub’ forms; but all literary forms can be described as prose and poetry. Poetry Arabic Poetry is a form of metrical speech with a rhyme. [12] The rhyme in Arabic poetry is achieved by   every line of the poem ending upon a specific letter. [13] The metrical aspect of Arabic poetry is due to   its rhythmical divisions, these divisions are called ‘al-Bihar’, literally meaning ‘The Seas’ in Arabic. This term has been used to describe the rhythmical divisions as a result of the way the poem moves   according to its rhythm. In Arabic poetry there are sixteen rhythmical patterns, which all of Arabic poetry adheres too or is   loosely based upon; 1. at-Tawil 2. al-Bassit 3. al-Wafir 4. al-Kamil 5. ar-Rajs 6. al-Khafif 7. al-Hazaj 8. al-Muttakarib 9. al-Munsarih 10. al-Muktatab 11. al-Muktadarak 12. al-Madid 13. al-Mujtath 14. al-Ramel 15. al-Khabab 16. as-Saria’ Each one of the al-Bihar have a unique rhythmical division. [14] The al-Bihar were first codified in the   8th century by al-Khalil bin Ahmad and have changed little since. The al-Bihar are based on the length   of syllables. A short syllable is a consonant followed by a short vowel. A long syllable is a vowelled   letter followed by either an unvowelled consonant or a long vowel. A nunation sign at the end of a word   also makes the final syllable long. In Arabic poetry each line is divided into two halves. Below are basic scansions of the metres commonly found in Arabic poetry, showing long (—) and   short (^) syllables. They represent pairs of half-lines and should be read from left to right. The patterns   are not rigidly followed: two short syllables may be substituted for a long one. Tawil — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | Kamil ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | Wafir ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ â€⠀ — | ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ — — | Rajaz — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | Hazaj ^ — — — | ^ — — — | ^ — — — | ^ — — — | Basit — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | Khafif — ^ — — | — — ^ — | — ^ — — | — ^ — — | — — ^ — | — ^ — — | Sari’ — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ â€⠀ | [For more details on the al-Bihar please see  www. theinimitablequran. om/TheRhythmicalPatterns. html ] An example of an Arabic poem, is the ancient Arabian poem called ‘Abu-l-‘Ata of Sind’: Of thee did I dream, while spears between us were quivering And sooth, of our blood full drop had drunken the tawny shafts! I know not, by heaven I swear, and true is the word I say This pang, is it love sickness, or wrought by a spell from thee. If it be a spell, then grant me grace of my love-longing If other the sickness be, then none is the guilt of thine. [15] This poem, in the original Arabic, falls into the rhythmical pattern of Tawil, one of the al-Bihar shown   above. 16] A literary analysis on any Arabic Poem will conclude that it adheres too or is based upon   the rhythmical patterns. This is supported by Louis Cheikho who collected pre-Islamic and Islamic   poetry and concluded that all of the poems conformed and were based upon the al-Bihar. [17] Pros e Arabic Prose can be called non-metrical speech, meaning it does not have a rhythmical pattern like   poetry mentioned above. Arabic prose can be further divided into two categories; Saj’ which is rhymed   prose and Mursal which is straight prose or what some may call ‘normal speech’. [18] An apt description of Saj’ is, in the words of Von Deffer: A literary form with some emphasis on rhythm and rhyme, but distinct from poetry. Saj’ is not really as   sophisticated as poetry, but has been employed by Arab poets, and is the best known of the pre- Islamic Arab prosodies. It is distinct from poetry in its lack of metre, i. e. it has not consistent rhythmical   pattern, and it shares with poetry the element of rhyme, though in many cases some what irregularly   employed. † [19] Mursal can be defined as a literary form that goes on and is not divided, but is continued straight   throughout without any divisions, either of rhyme or of a nything else. 20] Mursal is meant as a way of   expression close to the everyday spoken language, examples can be seen in speeches and prayers   intended to encourage or motivate the masses. The Qur’ans Literary Form The Qur’anic discourse cannot be described as any of the known literary forms. The most predominant   opinion is that it doesn’t adhere to any of the rules known to poetry and prose. Another opinion is that   the Qur’an combines metrical and non-metrical composition to create its own literary form. Some   scholars disagree with the above opinions and claim that the Qur’an is a form of rhymed prose, saj’. This opinion has arisen mainly due to the similarities of pre-Islamic prose and early Meccan chapters   of the Qur’an. However, the scholars who carry this opinion do not contend that the Qur’an is unique by   its use of literary and stylistic elements that render it inimitable. This unique use of literary elements   has not been found in any Arabic Prose, past or present. Below is an explanation, with reference to the main opinions above, on how the Qur’an achieves its   unique inimitable form. Non-compliance to the Rules of Prose or Poetry The Qur’anic literary form differs as it does not fit in to any of the literary categories explained above,   [21] it is not like the prose of Saj’ or Mursal and it doesn’t fit into any of the al-Bihar. This can be seen by   the following example: Wad Duha wal laili idha saja Ma waddaka Rabbuka wa maa qala Wa lal akhiraatu khairul laka minal oola Wa la sawfa ya teeka Rabbuka fa tarda†¦ By the morning hours and by the night most still Your Lord has neither forsaken you nor hates you And indeed the hereafter is better for you than the present And verily your Lord will give you so that you shall be well pleased†¦ [22] The examination of the whole chapter with reference to the above literary forms indicates that it is not   Saj’ or Mursal as this verse has an internal rhythm, whereas Saj’ does not have a consistent rhythm   and Mursal has no rhythm or rhyme. Also it cannot be described as poetry; the totality of this chapter, or   any other chapter for that matter, does not adhere to any of the al-Bihar. Unique Fusion of Metrical and non-Metrical Speech Some parts of the Qur’an follow the rules of poetry, that is, some verses can be described as one of   the al-Bihar. 23] When the totality of a Qur’anic Chapter, that contains some these verses is analysed,   it is not possible to distinguish its literary form. â€Å"The Qur’an is not verse, but it is rhythmic. The rhythm of some verses resemble the regularity of saj’ †¦But it was recognized by Quraysh critics to belong to neither one nor the other category. † [24] The Qur’an ach ieves this unique literary form by intermingling metrical and non-Metrical speech in   such a way that the difference can not be perceived. [25] This intermingling of metrical and non- metrical composition is present throughout the whole of the Qur’an. The following examples illustrate   this, â€Å"But the righteous will be in Gardens with Springs – ‘Enter in Peace and Safety! ’ – and We shall   remove any bitterness from their hearts: [they will be like] brothers, sitting on couches, face to face. No   weariness will ever touch them there, nor will they ever be expelled. [Prophet] tell My servants that I am   the Forgiving, the Merciful, but My torment is the truly painful one. Tell them too about Abraham’s   guests: when they came to him and said â€Å"Peace,† he said, ‘We are afraid of you’† [26] When reading the original Arabic of the above verse the reader moves from metric composition to   prose with out experiencing the slightest change of style or mode. [27] The same mingling of metrical   and non-metrical composition How to cite Arabic Literature, Essay examples

The current state of legal aid funding leaves many Australians without access to justice

The Legal Aid Act was established in 1978 so that access to justice for the disadvantaged, poor or excluded Australian citizens would be enhanced in a cost-effective way (Bernard, Snipes and Gerould, 29). The Legal Aid Act established a Legal Aid Commission (LAC) that ensured that the citizens who did not have the capacity or means to hire and engage private legal practitioners were able to access the Australian justice system (Kubrin, Stucky and Krohn, 18).Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The current state of legal aid funding leaves many Australians without access to justice specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More This fact would help the citizens to enjoy relatively equal and just outcomes of criminal, civil, family and administrative law matters. This Act was also important in that the access to justice and equality would conform to the legitimacy of the Australian justice system. This aspect would therefore help in avoiding social fragmentation between those who would not afford private legal consultations and those who would. The Legal Aid Act[1] of 1978 contained thirteen parts. The parts included preliminary definitions, establishment and functions of the Legal Aid Commission, its committee and provisions of legal assistance by the commission, reconsideration and review of decisions, finances of the commission, administrative provisions relating to the Legal Aid Commission, committees and reviews. It also included consultative committees; miscellaneous liabilities of the commission and finally, the transitional and the savings part respectively (Ilana and Bard, 17). Annotations 1.Denniss, R. Fear, J. and Millane, E. (2012). â€Å"Justice for All.† Giving Australians greater access to legal systems, Institute paper 8(1), 3-8. Print. According to the article, every individual needs to get fair treatment in the courts. It is therefore necessary that he procures the representation of a lawyer in any given court case. Lawyers can be expensive depending on the seriousness of the case that needs to be resolved and the ability and capacity of the person seeking representation to pay for legal services. The legal system operates by the rule of law that applies to all citizens. The high cost of legal representation has fundamental implications on the rights of disadvantaged citizens. Since 1973, the legal aid system of Australia has been providing legal assistance and advice to the disadvantaged citizens who would otherwise not afford the access to justice. The legal aid system has however been â€Å"underfunded† since the withdrawal of the Commonwealth[2] funding. The present funding does not meet the level of needs of the Australian disadvantaged community. The legal aid commissions both at the state and territorial levels use complex forms of mechanisms for rationing and administering legal assistance so that the most appropriate and deserving cases qualify. I n reality, the limitation and rationing of legal assistance shows that only the most poor and rich citizens have a high probability of legal representation.Advertising Looking for essay on common law? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Many Australian citizens belong to the vast middle class. This means that the accessibility of legal aid is low for poor citizens. This fact is true regardless of the strength of the individuals’ cases or the degree of justice that they pursue. Therefore, the legal aid[3] system has certain inclinations to only certain socio-economic cadres of the Australian society. Australians have not been confident with the Australian legal aid system for a long period of time. 2. Rix, Mark. Legal Aid, the Community Legal Sector and access to Justice: What has been the record of Australian Government? 2007. Plymouth, United Kingdom: Plymouth. Print. In his book, Rix argued that legal aid services suffere d due to the withdrawal of Commonwealth funding.Rix said that there was high concern that the quantity, quality and the degree of legal service assistance to people had declined in Australia. The cooperative model had been replaced by the purchase or provider funding. This fact had introduced another level of administrative and financial responsibility hence LACs channeled their funding elsewhere instead of using it in the provision of legal services to the citizens. The purchase or provider funding by the Commonwealth only funded matters that were under the Commonwealth law therefore inhibiting legal assistance to the needful. Many of the legal issues did not completely fall into the category of Commonwealth law and therefore, Australian citizens under the legal issues did not receive legal assistance. An example of a common legal issue that is not covered by the Commonwealth law and therefore receives no legal aid is domestic violence. The funding of only Commonwealth matters lead s to results that are insufficient, ineffective and illogical. Domestic violence should fall under family law which is under Commonwealth law. Domestic violence has a very high percentage of legal issues that need resolution. The purchase or provider scheme effectively reduced the funding required in legal family court issues, war veterans and child maintenance and support. This fact together with the reduction of funding from the Commonwealth completely changed the operations of the Legal Aid Commission. This restriction of funds meant that certain cases could not proceed and also a number of citizens who desperately needed legal assistance had very limited chances of getting the service. The number of people who could receive legal aid decreased and the probability of an applicant to get legal aid was reduced. The legal aid could also be provided with no charge and without any means of test or any procedural requirements. Legal aid could be in the form of grant money in accordance with part 3 of the Australian constitution.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The current state of legal aid funding leaves many Australians without access to justice specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More This fact showed that the commission could provide free legal aid to the applicants and could also determine which matters required the aid (Ivancevich and Matteson, 26). 3. Community Law Australia. (2012). â€Å"Unaffordable and Out of Reach.† The Problem of Access of Australian Legal System 12(3), 120-138. Print. According to the article, the legal system of Australia provides legal assistance to the less fortunate through legal aid commissions, community legal centers, indigenous legal service or other private lawyers who act as â€Å"pro bono†[4]. Due to the reduced funding of this service by the government, the legal aid services have been put in a situation that limits the eligibility of individua ls who are poor. Therefore, those citizens who need legal help but cannot afford representation do not often get it. The Australian government noted that about 98 percent of the individuals who received legal assistance were considered to be below the poverty line; hence this fact meant that most of the Australian citizens were unable to afford private legal assistance. Nevertheless, these individuals were eligible for legal assistance. Individuals who have no qualifications for legal aid usually go to community legal centers which deal with civil law. Civil law issues are dealt with by legal aid commissions. A majority of citizens who require legal assistance in civil law issues cannot be attended to. Due to funding challenges, the community legal centers have not been able to provide effective and sustainable aid. They have only been able to offer limited assistance which in most cases is not enough for the individual seeking legal assistance. Pro bono services and indigenous serv ices are also overused and cannot offer the proper and required legal assistance to people who are in need of them. The need for government funding that ensures provision of legal assistance should be provided to all individuals who are eligible for it. This study focuses on legal aid funding. Therefore, we shall review the financial perspective of the commission which is part 7of the financial section of the commission. The provision of the legal aid as per section 30 of the Legal Aid Act 1987 states that in accordance to subsections (2) or (4), the commission can provide legal aid. It may determine legal aid depending on the matter at hand. 4. Kirkwood, D. Inquiry to Legal and Access of Justice; Submission to the State and Constitutional References Committee. 2003. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia. Print. According to Kirkwood, the National Association of Legal Centers noted that there was a significant reduction of legal assistance in civil and family laws and al so across all areas of law due to the poor funding by the government. This fact has overseen the reduction of individuals receiving legal aid. Reduction of legal assistance has really caused undue pressure on other legal service providers because most of the people do not receive any assistance at all.Advertising Looking for essay on common law? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The justice system has however become increasingly complex over the years. A significant improvement of the laws that govern and regulate citizens has continued to be realized. Australian citizens expect their government to expertly manage their own legal issues because they remit tax to the government. The process of out sourcing and privatization in Australia means that the citizens must negotiate with several providers so as to access basic services. The concept that each Australian citizen is equal before the law has been undermined greatly by funding issues therefore giving an opportunity to only those who can afford private legal aid. This aspect has greatly lowered the community’s confidence towards the justice system and law compliance. The access to justice through legal aid has become an unfulfilled promise of the government since many of the citizens are poor and their cases have not been prioritized. People who receive legal assistance subsequently get limited aid that is insufficient to resolve their legal matters. Empirical evidence has shown that other factors except the underfunding of legal aid services have greatly contributed to the poor services offered by legal aid services. Previous studies have shown that the legal aid reduction had very little effect on legal aid services. The study however showed that there was a high percentage of self-representation. The study also revealed that a lot of people in Australia believed that they were not eligible for legal aid. 5. Rosemary, H. Jeff, G. and April, C. (2003).†Law Journal.† Legal Aid and Self Representation in Family Court Australia 12(5), 23-38. Print. This article focused on the research in the emerging response of self-representation in the family courts in Sydney, Parramatta and Adelaide cities that are populated with people of both middle and lower classes. Most of the earlier research had focused on funding shortages but this research focused on self-representation and the access of legal aid by litigants. The study researched about the relationship between self-representation and the availability of legal aid funding in family law. The results were presented as statistical analysis. The study showed that from the litigants used in the research, only 12.3 percent had received help from a legal aid lawyer. This figure was small and was a reflection of the number of people in Australia who successfully received legal aid. Part of the cases had moved to court without the appearance of a lawyer. About 8.9 percent of the sample study went to court waiting for the appointed lawyer from the legal aid commission to represent them. Most of the clients who had successfully qualified for legal aid did not receive any lawyers to represent them due to the low numbers of legal representatives. This number represented about 5.4 percent of the population who had not been served by legal representatives. Majority of people, 44.6 percent, had their grants of l egal aid terminated or not extended as the court proceedings were on going. This fact showed the unreliability of the aid given by the commission. About 3.5 percent of the clients could not get legal aid for the type of legal issues they had because they did not fall under the Commonwealth law and about 5.2 percent could not access legal aid offices due to their geographical locations. These statistical figures gave a reflection of the state of legal aid services rendered to the citizens. The figures showed that only a small percentage of people received legal assistance fully. Certain clients received legal representation but lacked representation and the grants were terminated. This aspect clearly showed the unreliability of legal aid and led to reduced reliance on it by poor Australian citizens. Case study Dietrich versus the Queen This case is among the important cases in Australian judicial laws. It was decided by the Australian High Court on 13th December 1992. The case demons trated the need to accord fair trial to a defendant and exposed the corrupt nature of the Australian justice system. The case was an indictment of the Australian justice system and exposed its malpractices in terms of violation of the human rights of the defendant. The defendant had to be provided with legal assistance and if it would not have been provided, then the trial would have been adjourned until a legal representative was found. The name of the accused was Olaf Dietrich. The defendant was prosecuted for having been in possession of heroin which he had carried from Bangkok but was apprehended in Melbourne Airport on December, 1986. He had put the drugs in sachets and swallowed them. He was arrested one morning by Australian Federal Police. He was then taken to Pentrige Prison Hospital where he was induced into releasing the remaining sachets from his body. He claimed in court that the drugs had not been his but that the police had â€Å"implanted† them on him. His tri al took place in the Court of Victoria in 1988.He was prosecuted under the Customs Act of 1901 for being in possession and trafficking of drugs. During his trial, he had no legal representation although he had applied for it. The Legal Aid Commission declined to accord him legal representation and directed that it would only help him if he consented to all the charges brought against him by the state. He sought for legal representation and even filed for legal aid in the Supreme Court of Victoria without any progress. He was later convicted of the principle charge. He appealed to the Supreme Court but the court did not hear his appeal. In his appeal, there were several arguments raised. He was represented by David Grace who raised the argument of â€Å"miscarriage of justice† on his behalf. He did not procure legal representation throughout his trial and given the nature of the charges, legal representation should have been provided to him. Another argument was that the judg e should have adjourned the trial until he was assigned a legal representative. These arguments were based on common law. Dietrich was convicted of trafficking heroine but not being the owner of the heroine that had been found in a paper bag in his house by the police. This fact showed that Dietrich could have been acquitted of other charges if he had acquired legal representation from the beginning of the trial. Assessment of legal authorities The Australian legal system is organized and mandated to provide a fair trial to defendants and to deliver justice to the deserving (Lanier and Henry, 25). From the case of Dietrich versus the Queen1, an analysis can be made in accordance to how the trial was handled. The court convicted the defendant through the Customs Act 19012. This Act prohibited the trafficking of illegal substances and properties including drugs. Pursuant to the Victorian Crimes Act of 19583, every accused person was lawfully entitled to representation. The court howe ver did not wait for him to procure a legal representative and claimed that the law stipulated that the defendant had to pay for his own legal representation. In addition, the court ruled that the law did not say that the state would cater for legal representation of the victim (Lilly, Cullen and Ball, 15). Australia is a signatory to the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 4. In article 14(3) of the ICCPR, it states that the accused should have legal representation provided to him. The court however denied that and claimed that it had not incorporated the ICCPR into its domestic laws yet it was a signatory to it. As a signatory, the court should have taken into consideration the laws that were provided in the treaties that the state had subscribed to.[5] The right to representation was also enshrined in Chapter 3 of the Australian Constitution. The Crimes Act of 19584 gave authority to judges to demand legal representation for accused persons . These acts allowed representation although many of the legal systems failed to notify the defendants. The legal aid commission was obliged to give aid to indigent defendants and this showed that they were biased. Conclusion The Australian legal aid system should provide services to the disadvantaged people who cannot afford hiring legal representatives. Legal aid should also be availed to all citizens who need access and representation no matter the seriousness of their crimes (Siegel, 4). The Commonwealth laws should also be put into the contexts of territorial or state laws so as to address legal issues and create eligibility for applicants. The legal aid also needs to receive more funding from the government so that it can provide effective and efficient services to the community and easier access to justice (McLaughlin, Muncie and Hughes, 23). The rule of law is meant to serve all citizens equally. It should not be used as a form of privilege to those who have the means. Summa ry of the folios The folios give a clear reflection of the current state of legal aid in Australia. The underfunding, ineffective and inefficient services provided by the Australian government and the conditions for the access to legal aid for the people underscore the â€Å"fragile† nature of the Australian justice system (Hopkins, 14). Legal aid is meant to serve the disadvantaged but the case study reveals that not all disadvantaged people are eligible for the aid. The annotations also indicate that the services offered by legal aid commissions are inadequate and unreliable (Williams, 12). This fact reduces the little confidence left in the community in this system and therefore, this option is not viewed as a solution during legal issues. Acts and statutes that clearly state and grant individuals the legal assistance do not really convey this message to the community. This fact has made access to justice by the underprivileged very difficult because of the complexity of t he conditions for the aid and also lack of information about the aid. These folios can therefore be used to give evidence of the unjust and unreliable nature of the Australian legal aid system to the underprivileged citizens who have no access to the justice system. Works Cited Bernard, Thomas, Snipes Jeffrey and Gerould Alex. Vold’s Theoretical Criminology (6th ed.), Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.Print. Hopkins, Burke. An Introduction to Criminological Theory (3rd ed), Gloucester, UK: Willan Publishing, 2009.Print. Ilana, Kass, and Bard, O’Neill. The Deadly Embrace, London, USA: University Press of America, 2006. Print. Ivancevich, John, and Matteson, Michael. Organization Behaviour and Management of communication 3rd (Ed), Tetons, USA: Irwin, 2003.Print. Kubrin, Charis, Stucky Thomas and Krohn Marvin. Researching Theories of Crime and Deviance, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009.Print. Lanier, Mark, and Henry, Stuart. Essential Criminology (2nd ed) , Boulder, USA: Westview Press, 2004.Print. Lilly, Robert, Cullen Frank and Ball Richard. Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences (4th ed), Thousand Oaks, UK: Sage Publications, 2007.Print. McLaughlin, Eugene, Muncie John and Hughes Gordon. Criminological Perspectives: Essential Readings (2nd ed), London.UK: Sage Publications, 2003.Print. Siegel, Larry. Introduction to criminal justice.12th Ed, Wadsworth, USA: Cengage Learning, 2009.Print. Williams, Katherine. Textbook on Criminology (6th ed), Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008.Print. Footnotes Legal Aid Act is legislation within the Australian law that aims to enhance access to justice for all citizens. The commonwealth refers to the union body of all former colonies of the British rule in the world. Legal aid refers to the legal representation and services given to clients. Pro bono is a term that refers to free legal services offered to indigent citizens. Dietrich V The Queen (1992)2Customs Act 1901(NSW) 3Victoria n Crimes Act 1958 (NSW) 4United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (December 16th 1966) entered into force (March 23rd 1976) This essay on The current state of legal aid funding leaves many Australians without access to justice was written and submitted by user Kenna Murphy to help you with your own studies. 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