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'''4- The third person masculine singular pronoun is always a mere | '''4- The third person masculine singular pronoun is always a mere ‘-h’ with no vowel attached to it.''' E.g. | ||
كتابه جديد (His book is new). | كتابه جديد (His book is new). | ||
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In plural, the | |||
In plural, the ‘-h’ pronoun only takes the “-hum” form as opposed to classical Arabic which also allows another form: “-him”. The same goes for the dual: Old Hijazi only has “-humā” while Classical Arabic has “-humā” and “-himā”. | |||
E.g. | E.g. | ||
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Classical Arabic: yahrubūn | Classical Arabic: yahrubūn | ||
== Final short vowels and Nunation in the Quranic Readings Tradition == | |||
Final short vowels and nunation (Iʕrāb) are fully employed in all of the canonical readings. This doesn’t necessarily mean Iʕrāb was part of the original language of the Quran since that the linguistic and historical analysis reveals that these readings were linguistically reworked<ref>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], p.214</ref>, none of them represents natural language<ref>Ibid, p.99</ref>, they were full of innovation and didn’t strictly adhere to a supposed oral tradition that goes back to Muhammad. An example of this is the following report from Al-Kisāʾī, the founder of a one of the canonical readings. In his reading, he treats the word thamūd in the accusative as triptotic (thamūdan: i.e. it can take nunation and one of three possible final short vowels). He also treats the word in the genitive and nominative as diptotic (thamūda/thamūdu: i.e. can’t take nunation, and can take one of two possible final short vowels instead of three). Al- Kisāʾī breaks his own rule in verse Q11:68 where the word thamūd is mentioned twice: first in the accusative and second in the genitive. According to his rule, the first word in the verse should be treated as triptotic (thamūdan), and the second word as diptotic (thamūda), but instead he treats both of them as triptotic (thamūdan, thamūdin, respectively): | |||
''ʔa-lā ʔinna thamūdan kafarū rabba-hum ʔa-lā buʕdan li-thamūdin'' (Q11:68)”. | |||
<span dir="rtl" lang="en">﴿أَلَا إِنَّ ثَمُوداً كَفَرُوا رَبَّهُمْ أَلَا بُعْدًا لِثَمُودٍ (٦٨)﴾ هود</span> | |||
Al-Kisāʾī was asked about this, and his response showed that his reasoning had no regard to oral transmission, he said: “It is ugly to have a word occur twice in two places (within the same verse) and then have them disagree [on triptosy/dipotsy], so I treated it [''ṯamūdin''] as a triptote because of it being close to it [''ṯamūdan'']." <ref>Ibid, p.189</ref> | |||
Marijn Van Putten comments on this report saying: | |||
“While this account of course does not prove that the Quran was once composed without ''ʔiʕrāb'', what it does show is how readers themselves thought about their role in applying ''ʔiʕrāb'' in recitation. Their role was not to faithfully verbatim the ''ʔiʕrāb'' as had been taught to them, but rather to argue and rationalize why a word should have the ''ʔiʕrāb'' that they would give it. In such cases even purely aesthetic arguments such as the one cited, was apparently enough to deviate from the way their teacher taught it (Ḥamzah, al-Kisāʔī’s direct teacher reads ''ṯamūda'' and ''li-ṯamūda'' in the relevant verse). As such the application of ''ʔiʕrāb'' by these readers can tell us nothing at all about the use of ''ʔiʕrāb'' of the original language of the qct. However, given that the choice of ''ʔiʕrāb'' was a rational endeavour explicitly based on both the ''rasm (QCT)'' and aesthetic preference rather than prophetic example, it becomes quite easy to envision that the presence of this very system was not original to the text, but was rather imposed on it sometime after the standardization of the QCT by ʕuṯmān.”<ref>Ibid, p.189</ref> | |||
Another sign that the application of Iʕrāb wasn’t based on oral tradition, is the pseudo correct use of Iʕrāb, as in the following example<ref>Ibid, p191-192</ref>: | |||
The question word أيَّانَ ʾayyāna (when?) which is used in the Quran several times (such as Q7:187), is a merge between two words: أي ʾayy (which) and آنʾān (time). The original shape with Iʕrāb is: ʾayya ʾānin. The Hamzah is lost which allows the merge: ʾayyānin. Yet all of the readings have the word as “ʾayyāna” instead of “ʾayyānin” although ʾān in this structure should take the final short vowel ‘i’ and nunation according to classical Arabic rules: The word ʾayy is the possessed مضاف, and the word ʾān is the possessor مضاف إليه which means it should take the “in” suffix. What explains the readers giving “ayyān” a final -a is that the two words originally had no final short vowels: ayy ān, or ayya ān. And when the two words merged as “ayyān” and got treated as a single word, the readers gave it a final -a because they thought the word is similar to other words such as: | |||
- Question words such as أينَ ʾayna which only takes a fixed final -a and can’t take nunation nor any other final short vowel. | |||
- Denotations of time which grammatically usually take a final -a, such as يومَ ''yawma'' ‘on the day’ and حينَ ''ḥīna'' ‘at the time’. | |||
'''The mysterious letters''' | |||
Unlike what the readers did with the entirety of the Quran, the mysterious letters are the only verses they didn’t force case inflection on. These letters appear at the beginning of 29 Surahs, such as Surah no.2 which begins with the three letters ألم (ALM) recited as “Alef lām mīm”. No one knows what these letters mean or why they were employed. Muslim scholars have many different explanations that are based on pure speculation. | |||
In Hadith, which classical Arabic has been imposed on, the mysterious letters are inflected for case: | |||
مَنْ قَرَأَ حَرْفًا مِنْ كِتَابِ اللَّهِ فَلَهُ بِهِ حَسَنَةٌ وَالْحَسَنَةُ بِعَشْرِ أَمْثَالِهَا لَا أَقُولُ: آلم حَرْفٌ. أَلْفٌ حَرْفٌ وَلَامٌ حَرْفٌ وَمِيمٌ حَرْفٌ | |||
“If anyone recites a letter of God’s Book he will be credited with a good deed, and a good deed gets a tenfold reward (Al-Qur’ān, 6:160). I do not say that ''A.L.M'' are one letter, but ''alif'' is a letter, ''lām'' is a letter and ''mīm'' is a letter.”<ref>[https://sunnah.com/mishkat:2137 Mishkat al-Masabih 2137, Book 8, Hadith 28]</ref> | |||
In the Arabic text of the Hadith, the three letters are case inflected in the last part of the Hadith: | |||
''“alifun'' is a letter, ''lāmun'' is a letter and ''mīmun'' is a letter.” | |||
Also when modern Muslim scholars cite this Hadith they pronounce the letters with inflection as can be heard in this example: | |||
<nowiki>https://youtu.be/bWxjAURbMYw?si=Z2ZlgxFxlPj4MxvL&t=22</nowiki> | |||
Since that these letters should be inflected in Classical Arabic, why were they left without any inflection in the readings tradition? Van Putten answers:{{Quote|[https://www.academia.edu/71626921/Quranic_Arabic_From_its_Hijazi_Origins_to_its_Classical_Reading_Traditions_Studies_in_Semitic_Languages_and_Linguistics_106 Marijn Van Putten, Quranic Arabic, p.200]|The form of the mysterious letters is fairly easy to understand from a situation that started out as lacking inflectional endings, which were classicized. | |||
As these mysterious letters have no obvious syntactical function, it is difficult to classicize these into an inflectional paradigm. The inverse, however, is more difficult to understand. There is no reason why the mysterious letters would be uninflected, if the base language of the Quran was inflected.}} | |||
== The Hamzah in the Quranic Reading Traditions == | == The Hamzah in the Quranic Reading Traditions == | ||