reynolds-the-quran-in-its-historical-context-2

274 Munther Younessomething that is read or recited, is a coincidence. In my judgment, itstrong indication that dabbar and its reflexive counterpart carrythat are different from the traditional interpretation of "manage" andthe meaning of dabbar is "manage," why is it then associatedwith amr "affair"? Are there not other phenomena that arebesides "affair"? And are there not things to ponder besides thespeech and verses? Consider, for example, the usage of another verb withmeaning of "ponder," namely tafakkar, which occurs thirteen timesQur'an. 39 It is used in association with "the madness of their co:mpani.o:(Q 7:184), "themselves" (30:8), "Allah's creation" (3:191), "stories""verses, signs" (10:24, 13:3, 16:11, 16:69, 30:21, 39:42, 45:13), rc;;ILtc;;w,Jn:lll'(16:44), and examples (59:21).J'he meanings that I would like to propose for the words al-mudabbiratiderive from their old Arabic usage as well as from a comparison withcognates in Hebrew and Aramaic, two languages which are not onlyrelated to Arabic, but also are known to have had a direct influence on theof the Qur'an. 40dabbarIn Hebrew the primary meaning of the Pi 'el verb form (the equivalentArabic Form II) derived from the root d-b-r is "to speak." 41 There is evidenceArabic dabbar was used in a sense close to that of Hebrew. Although suchseems to have escaped the Qur'iin commentators, there are indicationsexisted in the language before the advent of Islam and for some timeFor example, Ibn Manz;iir lists one of the meanings of the verb as "to tell,He writes, ·wa-dabbar al-l;zadith 'anhu rawahu ... wa-dabbartu al-l;zadith aj1 tza1ida•thti,bih 'an ghayrT . .. wa rawa al-AzharT bi-sanadih ila Sallam b. MiskTnsami 'tu Qatada yul;zaddithu 'anfulan yarwlh 'an AbT al-Darda' .'an rasiili llah ...(And "dabbar the l;zadith (saying) from him" [means] "he narrated it.""dabbartu l;zadith" means "I narrated it from others" ... Al-Azhariin his own isnad (chain of transmission) to Sallam b. Miskin, "I heard39 Mu~ammad Fu' ad 'Abd al-BiiqT, AI-Mu }am al-mufahras li-alfo; a/-Qur 'an al-karim, Cairo: .al-l;ladTth, 1988, 525.40 See A. Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'an, Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1938, 19-26~41 F. Brown, S.R. Driver, and C.A. Briggs, The Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew and EnglishPeabody,MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999, 180.The opening verses ofQur'an 79 275-relate from so and so, narrating from Abi al-Dardii', narrating (yudabbir). the Prophet ... )," 42Hebrew and Syriac, one of the primary meanings of the root '-m-r is "toIn Hebrew, the primary meaning of the two nouns derived from the rootnamely emer and imra, is ''utterance, speech, word." 44 In discussing theas used in the Qur'iin, A. Jeffery writes: "In its use in connection withdoctrine of revelation, however, it would seem to represent thememra ... The whole conception seems to have been strongly influbythe Christian Logos doctrine, though the word would seem to havefrom the Targumic use of memra." 45there is evidence that amr has a similar history to that of dabbar in Arabic.(d. 276/889) cites "speech, saying" (al-qawl) as one of its meanings. 46mudabbirat and amra the meanings suggested above yields the followingtranslation for Qur'iin 79:5: 47 "And those(£) who speak the Word."r-1-l'tiis:lliJ'iiti nashfii; fa-1-siibiqiiti sabqiiproposed reinterpretation ofQur'an 79:1,3, and 5 establishes the theme ofdoing good deeds in the same way that the reconstruction proposed for1-5, referred to above, does. While there are other possible ways to redot the· skeleton of vv. 2 and 4 such as wa-l-basitat basta4 8 for wa-l-nashitatthese two verses fit with the proposed interpretation as they are and thetheir general usage in the language suggests.• mrrtvtut!