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The Islamic Whale: Difference between revisions
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As we see, Ibn Abbas and his narration is respected by both sunni and shia Muslims. | As we see, Ibn Abbas and his narration is respected by both sunni and shia Muslims. | ||
==Other interpretations of Nun== | |||
Although the ''turjuman ul-Qur'an'' Ibn Abbas clearly explained that Nun is the whale which carries the Earth(s) on its back, there are also non-whale interpretations of Nun. | |||
==="ن is a letter of the alphabet"=== | |||
ن ("n") is a letter of the Arabic alphabet called نون (Nun). | |||
* This doesn't explain the verse at all. If anything, it would mean that Allah puts random letters into his revelation for mankind, for no reason. | |||
* Muhammad was illiterate and he did not write the revelations. He recited them. "Qur'an" means recitation. Maybe it was not just the letter ن ("n"), but the whole name نون ("nun"). It's just a matter of writing it. So maybe it was not meant to be a letter of the alphabet at all. Maybe it was the three-letter word N-u-n. | |||
* The verse 68:1 "نٓ وَٱلْقَلَمِ وَمَا يَسْطُرُونَ" could be translated as "Nun '''and''' the pen and what they write", since و usually means "and". It seems that Allah is enumerating 3 things: | |||
** Nun (ن or نون) | |||
** '''and''' (و) the pen (ٱلْقَلَمِ) | |||
** '''and''' (و) what (مَا) | |||
** they write (يَسْطُرُونَ) | |||
==="N" in "Ar-Rahmaa'''n'''"=== | |||
The word الرحمن, Ar-Rahman, "the gracious" is one of the names of Allah. The 13th sura starts with three letters الر, a few suras start with the letters حم. It we put together الر + حم + ن, we get الرحمن. | |||
* The word Ar-Rahman is nowadays actually written as الرحمان, but in the old Uthmani script it was written without the ا (alif) before the ن. It was added later, to indicate the "aa" vowel. | |||
* A lot of verses start on other [[Muqatta'at|letters]] and putting them together doesn't produce any interesting word. So choosing just three of them and getting an interesting word could be considered a cherry-picking. | |||
===Nun means "ink"=== | |||
The verse 68:1 would mean "The ink and the pen and that which they write". | |||
* The Qur'an used the word مِدَادًا (''midaadan'') for "ink" in the verse 18:109, while it used the word نون (''nun'') to mean "whale" in the verse 21:87. So it is more probable, that the meaning of nun here is "whale". | |||
* According to this interpretation, this refers to the ink with which the Qur'an was written. Which is not very fitting, since the primary form of the Qu'ran is recitation. The word "Qur'an" itself means "recitation". | |||
==="Allah knows best"=== | |||
"[[Allah knows best]]", in other words "the author knows what he meant", is not an interpretation, at all. "Allah knows best" could be said about all Qur'anic verses. In fact, there could be a whole tafsir saying only "Allah knows best" to every verse. But it would be useless, because "Allah knows best" doesn't explain the meaning at all. | |||
==Evidence== | ==Evidence== | ||