Ma Waqa fi al-Quran bighayr Lughat al-Arab
- Author died
- 1407 AH
- Editions
- al-Jāmi‘ah al-Islāmīyah
Mā Waqa‘a fī al-Qur’ān bi-Ghayr Lughat al-‘Arab ("What Occurred in the Qur'an from Non-Arabic Languages") is a linguistic and exegetical treatise by the Moroccan scholar Muhammad Taqi al-Din al-Hilali (d. 1407 AH / 1987 CE) examining Arabized loanwords (mu‘arrab) and shared Semitic vocabulary in the Qur'an .
Background and Purpose
The work was written while al-Hilali was teaching at the Faculty of Da‘wah and Usul al-Din at the Islamic University of Madinah and appeared in its official journal (Majallat al-Jami‘ah al-Islamiyyah) in Muharram 1391 AH . Al-Hilali wrote the study to address both classical scholarly disagreements regarding the presence of non-Arabic vocabulary in the Qur'an and modern orientalist claims, particularly those advanced by Arthur Jeffery in The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'ān .
Al-Hilali also justifies the religious permissibility and intellectual necessity of learning foreign tongues, citing the hadith wherein the Prophet commanded Zayd ibn Thabit to learn the writing of the Jews and the Syriac script, as commented upon by ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Mubarakfuri in Tuhfat al-Ahwadhi .
Theoretical Framework and Method
Al-Hilali argues that no major language spoken by a civilized nation remains completely isolated; cross-cultural exchange through trade, travel, and material goods naturally introduces foreign words into a lexicon . He illustrates this with Qur'anic references to Mecca as an international trading center receiving goods from across the world, as well as the seasonal commercial journeys of Quraysh to Yemen and the Levant .
The treatise makes several core methodological arguments:
- Nature of Qur'anic Arabic: The Qur'an contains no foreign sentence structures or unassimilated foreign words; all words in it conformed to Arabic morphological patterns and phonology and were used and understood by pre-Islamic Arabs, which maintained the integrity of the Qur'anic challenge (i‘jaz) to the Arabs .
- Critique of Classical Theories: Al-Hilali rejects the thesis of Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, who claimed that identical words across disparate languages arose by mere coincidental concurrence (tawārud al-lughāt), calling it linguistically untenable for geographically distant and historically distinct nations . Instead, he endorses the view of Abu Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam and Ibn al-Jawzi that these words originated in other tongues but became genuinely Arabic through assimilation and use .
- Distinction Between Cognates and Loanwords: Al-Hilali critiques classical authorities such as Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti in al-Itqan fi ‘Ulum al-Qur’an for their lack of familiarity with other Semitic languages, arguing that many words previously classified as borrowings (such as Hebrew or Syriac) are in fact shared cognates native to the Semitic family, akin to shared roots across Romance or Germanic languages .
Word Analyses
The work examines numerous individual terms claimed by classical lexicographers or orientalists to be non-Arabic:
- Al-Rahmān and Allāh: Al-Hilali refutes the view of al-Mubarrad and Tha‘lab that al-Rahmān was borrowed from Hebrew, explaining it as an authentic Arabic form sharing a common Semitic root . He also argues that the divine name Allāh is non-derived (murtajal) rather than derived (mushtaqq), noting its universal presence across Semitic languages such as Syriac (Alāhā) and Assyrian .
- Abārīq and Istabraq: Examines the Persian origins of abārīq (pitchers) and istabraq (thick brocade), citing Arabic poetry and philological analyses by al-Tha‘alibi, al-Jawaliqi, and al-Baydawi .
- Al-Abb: Rejects the claim cited by al-Shaydhala and Jeffery that al-abb (herbage) in Surah ‘Abasa is Berber, explaining that pre-Islamic Arabs had no contact with Berbers and pointing out its Semitic roots and occurrence in classical Arabic usage .
- Ibla‘ī: Refutes reports claiming that ibla‘ī (swallow) in Surah Hud is an Indian word, pointing out the linguistic absurdity of the claim and noting that the root contains the pharyngeal consonant ‘ayn, which is characteristic of Semitic languages and absent in Indian tongues .
- Akhlad, Asbāt, and Asfār: Categorizes akhlad (inclined/clung) and asfār (books) as shared Semitic vocabulary present in Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac, while treating asbāt (tribes) as a proper designation for the tribes of the Israelites corresponding to Arabic qabā’il .
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