Internal Rhymes as Evidence for Old Hijazi: Difference between revisions

In this example, the final short vowel ‘u’ and nunation 'n' are added to the word kitāb (book) making it “kitābun” (spelled in Arabic as kitāb since that nunation is not usually written). The endings are part of the i'rab إعراب, the Arabic system of noun cases markings. There are three possible cases, the nominative, genetive, and accusative. These cases indicate how the noun is used the sentence, either as a subject, an object of a preposition, or an object of a verb. These case endings are written in certain texts such as the Qur'an but are not necessary for understanding the sentence and as such in spoken forms of Arabic are usually omitted. They consist, mostly, of unwritten short vowels and thus are also not usually written except in certain texts such as the Qur'an. Grammatically, the word “jadīd” (new) should also receive the same “un” as it is in the nominative case, but since that the word “jadīd” is at the end of the sentence, “un” is not added (though the rules of grammer call for it, and it is written but not pronounced), which leaves the word in its original form: jadīd.  

Most of Arabic singular feminine nouns and adjectives end with “ah”. As in: madrasah مدرسة (school). But when anyth noun case marking or attached possessive pronoun is pronounced at the end of these words, the final ‘ah’ turns into ‘at’. As in: madrasatī (my school).

The word Kitāb is the object of the verb in the sentence so it receives a final ‘a’ vowel. The word is also indefinite so it also received nunnation, an ‘an’. The word “jadīd” describes the word “kitaban” so it should also receive the same final “an”, but since that the word is at the end of the sentence, the “an” is turned into a long ‘a’ vowel: jadīdā.  

Quranic recitation rules (Tajwīd تجويد ), as set out by Muslim scholars, state that during recitation one should avoid pausing at a non-pausal position except when the reciters runs out of air and needs to take a breath. To aid the reciter with this, modern prints of the Quran include diacritical marks showing where it’s possible to pause in the middle of a verse. The position of such a diacritical mark in a verse is determined based on the meaning and the grammar of the verse.  

{{Quote|{{Quran|3|20}}|

أَلَمْ تَرَ إِلَى ٱلَّذِينَ أُوتُوا۟ نَصِيبًۭا مِّنَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ يُدْعَوْنَ إِلَىٰ كِتَـٰبِ ٱللَّهِ لِيَحْكُمَ بَيْنَهُمْ ثُمَّ يَتَوَلَّىٰ فَرِيقٌۭ مِّنْهُمْ وَهُم مُّعْرِضُونَ

 

So if they argue with you, say, "I have submitted myself to Allah [in Islam], and [so have] those who follow me." (Pausal position) And say to those who were given the Scripture and [to] the unlearned, "Have you submitted yourselves?" (Pausal position) And if they submit [in Islam], they are rightly guided;(Pausal position) but if they turn away - then upon you is only the [duty of] notification. (Pausal position) And Allah is Seeing of [His] servants.}}

There’s a mismatch between Arabic spelling and classical Arabic pronunciation. For example:

Arab grammarians tried to explain the mismatch between spelling and classical Arabic pronunciation by saying that every Arabic word is spelled as if the word was the first to be uttered and the last to be uttered.<ref>Ghanim Qadduri, rasm al-miṣḥaf, p.67</ref> This rule explains why the alef of the definite article is always spelled although it’s only pronounced when it’s in the beginning of utterance. It also explains all the previous mismatch examples:

B- Internal rhymes in the Quran that only show up if every word was pronounced in the pausal form. Which means that what was thought to be a special treatment for the pronunciation of pausal words was actually the norm for almost all words in the original language of the Quran. The mismatch between the Quranic spelling and the Classical Arabic pronunciation is the result of imposing classical Arabic on a text that wasn’t written in Classical Arabic. The Quran was written in a language that Van Putten and Ahmad Al-Jallad call “Old Hijazi”.

ʾaghnā wa ʾaqnā.  

Old Hijazi: aghnē wa aqnē.

khāshiʕan mutaṣaddiʕan. (The two words are in context)

“al-baʾsāʾi wal-ḍarrāʾi”. This example occurs three times: {{Quran|2|177|}},{{Quran|6|42|}}, {{Quran|7|94|}}. And occurs once in the nominative {{Quran|2|214|}} “al-baʾsāʾu wal-ḍarrāʾu”. In all these 4 occurrences, the two words were in context. In Old Hijazi, the two words in the four instances are pronounced as: ǝl-baʾsāʾ wal-ḍarrāʾ. Note that although Old Hijazi lost the use of Hamzah, the Hamzah is still retained in a word-final position that is preceded by a long 'a' vowel.  

As for the last word of the verse, it didn’t take the “in” suffix because the word is at a pausal position, and thus the word stayed in its original form: khāṭiʾah (instead of khāṭiʾatin).

Arab grammarians claim that this spelling is the result of the rule that every word is spelled in its pausal form. But what if these words were pronounced the same way they were spelled? In other words, what if each of these words was pronounced in the pausal form? The result is that the three words would rhyme with each other:

Based on the evidence of internal rhymes in the Quran, Van Putten and Stokes concludes that the original language of the Quran had the following features that sets it apart from classical Arabic<ref>Marijn Van Putten. [https://www.academia.edu/37481811/Case_in_the_Qurˀānic_Consonantal_Text_Wiener_Zeitschrift_für_die_Kunde_des_Morgenlandes_108_2018_pp_143_179 Case in the Quranic Consonantal Text]. p.13</ref>:

Old Hijazi pronunciation:          hum ǝl-kafarah ǝl-fajarh

Classical Arabic pronunciation: humu l-kafaratu l-fajarh

The Quran uses two words for “disbelievers”: kāfirūn/kāfirīn (used 126 times) and kuffār (used 19 times). This verse is the only time the Quran uses the word “kafarah” for “disbelievers”. The reason for this is for the word to internally rhyme with the next word: ǝl-fajarh (the wicked ones). Reading the verse in Classical Arabic ruins the rhyme between the two words and thus makes this unique choice for the word pointless:

humu l-kafaratu l-fajarh.  

The last word cannot be pronounced “l-fajartu” because it’s at the end of the verse and hence the ‘u’ marker for the nominative isn’t added. And since that nothing was added, the final feminine ‘h’ remains and doesn’t turn into a ‘t’.

The verse is spelled in the Quran as: hum al-kafarah al-fajarh. The classical Arabic pronunciation turns the feminine ending of the word “al-kafarah” into a ‘t’. So the word should be spelled with a ‘t’ الكفرت . Yet the word in the Quran isn’t spelled with a ‘t’ in accordance with the claimed pausal spelling rule which justifies the mismatch between the spelling of the Quran and the Classical Arabic pronunciation. Note how if the verse is read the same way it’s spelled then the two words rhyme with each other. This observation applies on all Old Hijazi internal rhymes except the ones where the classical Arabic pronunciation only adds final short vowels on words that don’t end with the feminine ‘ah’. In this special case there’s no mismatch between the classical Arabic pronunciation and the spelling as short vowels cannot be spelled in Arabic. An example of this is:

al-ʕalīm ǝl-ḥakīm (Old Hijazi)

The two words are spelled in the Quran as: raghabā wa rahabā. The classical Arabic nunation of the word “raghab” isn’t written (raghaban رغبن) in accordance with the claimed pausal spelling rule. Note how if the two words are read the same way they are spelled then they rhyme with each other.

The word “ʕurub” wasn’t used anywhere else in the Quran.      

The word “fājir” wasn’t used anywhere else in the Quran.      

The word “humazah” wasn’t used anywhere else in the Quran.  

OH: min sharri l-waswās ǝl-khannās

==The Rhyming Quality of Old Hijazi internal rhymes==

'''High quality:''' That’s when the two rhyming words share the same final vowel and final consonant. Such as:

 

 

The two words share the same final vowel (ī) and the same final consonant (m). The fact that the rest of the two words share the same vowel and the same arrangement of consonants makes the rhyming quality perfect:

 

 

 

 

 

 

'''2- Verse-final attributes of Allah.''' The majority of internal rhymes in the Quran fall under this type. Of this type, there are 12 unique high quality internal rhymes, 49 with repetition. As for normal quality internal rhymes of this type (verse-final attributes of Allah), there are 38 unique ones, 225 with repetition.  

The majority of verse-final rhymes in the Quran fall under an easy type of rhyme that takes advantage of the fact that regular plural nouns and adjectives in Arabic end with ūn/īn and that verbs that are conjugated for masculine plural end with ūn. Since that in the language of the Quran ū rhymes with ī, Quranic rhymes freely alternates between ūn and īn. In this rhyming scheme, when a verse doesn’t end with a plural masculine noun or a plural masculine adjective or a verb conjugated for masculine plural, the Quran takes advantage of the fact that many emphatic forms in Arabic end with īC/ūC (C stands for consonant). So the Quran adds an emphatic attribute of God to the end of the verse and thus the verse ends with a rhyme that fits the surrounding verses.  

The word ʕalīm was used in the same manner in 44 verses. But the Quran usually doesn’t only use one word as an attribute of God in the ending of verses. The Quran usually uses a pair of two words that form an internal rhyme with each other while the second word of the pair forms an external rhyme with the final words of the surrounding verses. All the internal rhymes of verse-final attributes of God become absent if they were read in classical Arabic. Take for example حكيم عليم “Wise, Knower” which was used in the ending of 15 verses:

Hadith was written down in the second and third Islamic centuries, the same period that Arab grammarians wrote their first works. In their works there’s no mention of any variety of Arabic that lacks nunation and final short vowels. Yet the Hadith tradition has many internal rhymes that only appear if nunation and final short vowels were dropped. Which leads to the same conclusion that Van Putten reaches based on the study of pre-Islamic Arabic varieties and the early Arabic texts written in scripts other than Arabic. He says:  

{{Quote|Marijn Van Putten. [https://www.academia.edu/71626921/Quranic_Arabic_From_its_Hijazi_Origins_to_its_Classical_Reading_Traditions_Studies_in_Semitic_Languages_and_Linguistics_106_  Quranic Arabic]. 2022. p.18|(what) the Arabic the grammarians saw fit to comment upon is a highly selective subset of forms of Arabic that were around. Exclusively taking that which the grammarians saw fit to comment upon as “Arabic”, ignores a vast amount of linguistic variation that existed in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic period.}}<br />

The first example is from the seven aḥruf Hadith listed in a huge number of Hadith sources. The two rhyming words in this Hadith always come at a possible pausal position and sometimes at the end of the Hadith, such as:

{{Quote|Musannaf of Ibn Abi Shaybah. Dar Al-Taj. vol.6 p.137| «نَزَلَ الْقُرْآنُ عَلَى سَبْعَةِ أَحْرُفٍ كُلٌّ ‌<u>شَافٍ ‌كَافٍ</u>»

Classical Arabic: shāfin kāf, or shāfin kāfī}}

 

Classical Arabic: al-maʾthami wal-maghram

{{Quote|Sunan Ibn Majah. Dar Al-Risalah Al-ʿilmiyyah. vol.5 p.17|اللَّهمَّ إنِّي أسألُكَ مِنَ الخيرِ كلِّهِ <u>عاجلِهِ وآجلِهِ </u>، ما عَلِمْتُ منهُ وما لم أعلَمْ ، وأعوذُ بِكَ منَ الشَّرِّ كلِّهِ <u>عاجلِهِ وآجلِهِ </u>، ما عَلِمْتُ منهُ وما لم أعلَمْ

OH: ʕājilih wa ājilih

CA: ʕājilihī wa ʾājilih}}