Tag: prophethood

Surah 36: Y. S., Part 1

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Let it be known that my family now gifts me Qurans. I’m not complaining, they’re incredibly useful and rather beautiful books to have on my shelves. For my birthday, my husband found for me a Yusuf Ali translation of the Quran. For just because, my in-laws bought for me Muhammad Asad’s translation of the Quran.

These are really nice resources, rooted in Islamic scholarship, but I’ve been on the fence about how to use them with this blog. They are more than just translations, they are commentaries (or tafsir, in Arabic). The text within is heavily footnoted to explain, supplement, and interpret the Quran’s content. Sometimes the explanations are to do with choices of translation, but oftentimes they are done to direct the readers’ exegesis of the text. This can prime the reader to conclusions or assumptions that aren’t inherently communicated in the text, which is something I want to avoid. Then again, I’m creating something similar with this blog, aren’t I? My own process of processing the Quran has primed me to see certain things and come to certain conclusions about the text. You can’t say that after two years of being into this thing I don’t have any conclusions at play in my interpretation. So is it time to add these commentaries into the mix?

I’m going to write this post twice, once by myself with my own takeaways, and then once again having read through the commentaries. Today’s surah, yaa siin, “Y. S.,” is 83 ayat long, and the ayat are of shorter length. Before being primed with my opinions, take a look at it yourself and see what strikes you.

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Surah 26: The Poets

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Almost a year back I made this chart to envision whether it was ever going to get easier writing content about the Quran’s suwar. It’s a bad chart, and that’s mostly because it assumes that the Quran’s ayat have a fairly consistent size across suwar. Even at that time, this fallacy should have been obvious, but today’s situation particularly makes it clear. The last surah we covered, Surah al-Furqan, was 77 ayat long. Today’s is 227. Yet they feel very similar in length because today’s Surah ash–ShuÊ•araa’, “The Poets,” is divided into very tiny ayat. So despite the sight of such a large number, be not dismayed, this surah is in fact pretty short.

It is also pretty repetitive, delving back into the prophet cycles. Because this is material I’ve seen before, and also because this material is more structured than usual, I’d recommend that you pick at least one section and read it yourself. I’m aware that most of my readers haven’t read the Quran, and are mostly enjoying my commentary. I’d feel better if you experienced at least some of the Quran directly, though, so that you have experience with which to judge whether I’m writing in proportion to the text itself. So pick one section, at the least, and give it a try.

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Surah 21: The Prophets, Part 1

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A frustrating thing about Arabic is its plurals. English has a few words that change radically from their singular to plural forms: mouse to mice, loaf to loaves, tooth to teeth. In Arabic, about 41% of the mainstream nouns change radically to become plural (and adjectives do this too, wah!). The word for “prophet” in Arabic is nabii, but to become plural it becomes anbiyaa’. And that’s the title of today’s surah: The Prophets.

Who are the prophets? You might laugh that we are asking that at this point in the Quran, which has spent so much time listing and describing and enjoining and praising and validating the prophets. Yet here we are again, meeting the prophets. As usual it is in the context of establishing Muhammad as the latest iteration of a legacy of God reaching out to mankind. There is an economy of message in returning to this topic today. With a sweeping look at the prophetic line, the surah is able to reprove multiple points in its opponents’ theologies, assert its own theology, and set up its lore of inspirational figures.

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