semitic rhetoric as a key to the question of nazm of the qur'anic text

8/17/2019 Semitic Rhetoric as a Key to the Question of Nazm of the Qur'anic Text

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Semitic Rhetoric as a Key to the Questionof Na†m of the Qur‘anic Text

Michel Cuypers

IDEO (Institut Dominicain d‘Études Orientales), Cairo

This article is situated in the context of recent research into the coherence andstructure of the Qur‘anic text, introduced at the end of the twentieth century by

Angelika Neuwirth, Pierre Crapon de Caprona, Mustansir Mir, M.A.S. Abdel

Haleem, Neal Robinson, Mathias Zahniser and more recently by Salwa El-Awa.1

This research resumes, with new insights, the very ancient question of the

composition, or na†m, of the Qur‘an. While taking advantage of elements of thesestudies, a detour by modern Biblical exegesis allowed me to push them further, by

applying to the Qur‘anic text the different rules and characteristics of the Semitic

rhetoric discovered through the Biblical studies, but commanding, as we will see,

the texts of the Bible as well as those of other sacred texts of the ancient Semitic

world, particularly the Qur‘an.

A brief historical survey of the problem of naẓm

The well known commonplace in Qur‘anic studies of the apparent disorder of the

Book can be made specific in the following way: is the Qur‘an composed oforiginally independent fragments, brought together somewhat randomly when the

final collection of the Muṣḥaf was made, after the Prophet‘s death (as the historical

criticism dominating modern Qur‘anic studies in the West claims); or are thesefragments or textual units, despite appearances, arranged into a genuinecomposition, to form a logical and coherent whole? But, if so, what kind of

composition?

The question arose very early in the Muslim world itself and was already the subject

of several books in the third/eighth and fourth/ninth centuries, carrying the title of Na†m al-Qurʾān, The Composition of the Qur‟an.2 Unfortunately these books arelost, but their content can be deduced from later similar works on the ‗inimitability‘

of the Qur‘an, iʿjāz al-Qurʾān. Among other questions, they try to reply toopponents who denounced the lack of coherence in the composition of the Qur‘anictext.3 In reply, their authors show how certain verses match up, throughout the

Qur‘an, thus providing a certain unity in the entire Book. They also point out severalcharacteristics of composition such as parallelisms or repetitions. These replies,

however, remain very partial and do not rest on any general theory of the


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2 Journal of Qur‘anic Studies

composition of the Book. The same applies to the authors of later encyclopedias ofthe Qur‘anic sciences, such as Badr al-Dīn al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392) ( Al- Burhān fī

ʿulūm al-Qurʾān) and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) ( Al- Itqān fī ʿulūm al-

Qurʾān), or to certain exegetes, such as Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209) orBurhān al-Dīn al-Biqāʿī4 (d. 885/1480) who also pick out several features of

composition. In particular they show that such a verse is linked to the preceding

verse, or the beginning of a sura is linked to the end of the preceding one. They thus

highlight a certain concatenation of verses and suras (what Mustansir Mir has calleda ‗linear-atomistic‘ method5), but without succeeding in finding a genuine organic

structure combining the different parts of a sura or different suras together. The

varied elements of composition which they bring out (parallelism, repetition,

antithesis, etc.) remain isolated, without managing to constitute a system. ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078) was doubtless the classic author the closest to suchsystematization, but his structural theory did not go beyond the study of short textual

units, verses or sentences. The ancients seem to have had little interest in (or

awareness of) the structure of large textual sets.

At the very end of the twentieth century, two Muslim commentators undertook a

kind of systematization of the composition of the whole Qur‘an. The Pakistani

exegete Amīn Aḥsan Iṣlāḥī (d. 1997) showed that most of the suras, if not all ofthem, form pairs, semantically connected by similarity, opposition or

complementarity6 — a hypothesis that my personal analysis on the basis of Semitic

rhetoric seems to confidently confirm. On the other hand, the Syrian commentator

Saʿīd Ḥawwa (d. 1989) has tried to show the structure of every sura, by dividing itinto four different levels of text, composing together a coherent whole,7 an

achievement which was never attempted before him, according to his own words.The effort of Saʿīd Ḥawwa was very new in Islamic exegesis, but it was not

supported by any solid literary theory: the divisions of the text he proposes areintuitively made, without well defined criterion. They often remain too subjective.

From Biblical rhetoric to Qur’anic naẓm

For centuries Biblical scholars have been confronted with the same question as

Qur‘an scholars, of yesterday and today: like the Qur‘an, certain texts of the Biblealso appear effectively as a collection of more or less independent fragments,without clear logical coherence between them. This is true of the prophetic books,

but also of the four latest books of the Pentateuch, of the Psalms, and even of theGospels (a mixture of brief narratives, parables, teachings and polemical debates).

Today, alongside the majority of scholars holding to the historical-critical method,which deconstructs the text to understand its historical genesis, in a diachronicperspective, other scholars, taking up a synchronic viewpoint, pose the question of

the coherence and composition of the Biblical texts as they appear in their final


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Semitic Rhetoric as a Key to the Question of N a†m of the Qur‘anic Text 3

canonical version, whatever might be their historical development. Instead ofassuming an incoherent text made up of independent fragments, one starts with theinverse hypothesis, of a coherent text, the various parts of which are organically and

deliberately connected.

The first discovery, which was to be the starting point of a systematic theory, took

two and a half centuries to develop. It was mainly made by an English Biblicalscholar, Robert Lowth (1710–1787), who in 1753 published his Readings on the

sacred poetry of the Hebrews (De sacra poesi Hebraeorum). In this book he shows

that the Psalms and other poetical texts of the Bible are composed of parallel verses,

which maintain between them a relationship of synonymy, of antithesis, or

complementarity. This theory has become classical in Biblical studies. But a few

years before, the German scholar Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752), noticed inhis Gnomon Novi Testamenti or Exegetical Annotations on the New Testament (1742) the great frequency in the New Testament of the feature of chiasmus

(AB/B‘A‘) or inverse parallelism which sometimes takes the form of a concentric or

ring composition, when, between the two sides of the inverse parallelism, a central

element is inserted (AB/x/B‘A‘).

Subsequently it was perceived that these features of composition existed throughout

the Bible, not only in relation to verses, but also on a much wider scale, betweengroups of verses, and thus at several levels, even in an entire book. It was again two

Englishmen who, around 1820, were foremost in continuing the work of the

pioneers just mentioned: John Jebb (1775–1833)8 and Thomas Boys (1792–1880).9 These principles of composition are now well systematized in a theory which was at

first known as ‗Biblical rhetoric‘ and more recently as ‗Semitic rhetoric‘ when it

appeared that it applied equally to ancient non-Biblical Semitic texts: Akkadian

(third millennium BC), Ugaritic (second millennium BC)10 Pharaonic texts (around

1000 BC),11 and Islamic ḥadīth(s). In the 1980s a team of four researchers in Beirut,analysed, in accordance with these principles, some Biblical texts and someḥadīth(s).12 They showed that these texts are all constructed on the same principle of

symmetry, typical of Semitic rhetoric and very different from the Greek rhetoric of

which we are all heirs, in both the Western and the Arab world. The term ‗rhetoric‘

here must be taken in the restricted sense of ‗the art of composition of speech‘ or

‗the arrangement of the parts of speech‘, which corresponds to only one of the partsof classical Greek-Latin rhetoric, the dispositio.13 Just as the composition of the

word or sentence follows rules of grammar, speech as a whole also follows rules ofcomposition. And as every author has a certain freedom in the choice of the words

and the rules of syntax, according to the purpose which he is seeking, it will be the

same for the Semitic author with the principles of rhetorical composition. It is thusnot about fixed forms compulsory for the text, as in the ancient poetry, but about a

kind of ‗grammar of speech‘ or ‗rhetoric of composition‘. While Greek rhetori c uses


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a linear and continuous manner of composing speech, Semitic rhetoric for its partproceeds by way of semantic correspondences, in complex games of symmetries.The principal theoretician of this Semitic rhetoric today is Roland Meynet, professor

of Biblical exegesis at the Gregorian University in Rome, who has set out hissystematization in two books: Rhetorical Analysis. An Introduction to Biblical

Rhetoric,14 and Traité de rhétorique biblique.15

Over the past fifteen years, I have published in various articles in French theanalysis of the composition of some thirty suras, following this system, and recently

a book, which analyses the whole of the long sura 5, al- Māʾida.16 It turns out that

this ‗rhetorical analysis‘ can be applied perfectly, in accordance with all its

principles, to the Qur‘anic text. My research is therefore totally interdisciplinary,

since it applies to the Qur‘an a method developed entirely w ithin the framework ofBiblical studies.

A sketch of rhetorical analysis

The basic principle of composition in Semitic rhetoric is symmetry. The aim of the

analysis will, therefore, essentially be to pinpoint the various forms of symmetry

which make up the text, defining the relationships which the different textual units

have with one another. As we have seen above, there are three of these symmetriesor three ‗figures of composition‘ – parallelism, or parallel construction, where

related units of text reappear in the same order (ABC//A‘B‘C‘); ring or concentric

composition, when the units of text are arranged concentrically around a centre

(ABC/x/C‘B‘A‘, but sometimes simply A/x/A‘); and mirror composition, when the

central element is missing (ABC/C‘B‘A‘).

These symmetries are total when all the elements of the text or most of them,

correspond to each other. But mostly, symmetries are only partial, indicated in the

text by compositional indicators: outer terms, at the beginning and the end of the

unit they frame (the traditional inclusion); initial terms, central terms and final

terms, respectively at the beginning, middle or end of symmetrical units; median

terms, at the end of one unit and the start of the next (what Biblical scholars call the

‗link-word‘). The relationship between these terms can be a relationship of identity,synonymy (in its broad sense of terms of similar meaning), antithesis, homophony,

paronymy (or near-homonymy, which is quite frequent in the Qur‘an).

These indicators and symmetries exist at different levels of the text, which must becarefully distinguished from each other, starting from the lower levels and working

up to the higher levels:

the member (or ‗stich‘, in Greek) is the primary rhetorical level, usuallycorresponding to a syntagma;

the segment consists of one, two or three members (never more);


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the piece consists of one, two or three segments (never more);

the part consists of one, two or three pieces (never more).

The same goes for the four superior levels: the passage, the sequence, the section

and the book , each made up of one or more units (here in any quantity) of the levelwhich immediately precedes them. Sometimes intermediary levels – sub-part , sub-

sequence and sub-section – are added.

The rhetorical analysis carried out on about thirty suras, of diverse literary genres

(eschatological oracle, as in the sura 101, the first example below; prayer, as theFātiḥa, the third example; narrative, as the sura Joseph, fourth example; polemic, as

the second and fifth examples, extracted from the sura 5), of different datings

(Mekkan or Medinan), and whatever their style, poetical or prosaical, shows thatthese principles of Semitic rhetoric apply to all the suras analysed. This allows one

to extrapolate reasonably by asserting that the totality of the Qur‘anic text is mostlikely composed in this way. It is too early to create precise statistics, but it seems

that the parallel composition appears mostly at the lower levels of composition

(segments and pieces), that the concentric or ring compositions dominate at the

medium levels (parts, passages and sequences), and that the mirror composition

appears more frequently at the upper level of the sections. It is necessary to

underline the frequency of the concentric composition, at the intermediate levels,which are also the most significant for the interpretation of the text: the centre of

these compositions plays indeed a quite particular role as key of the interpretation. It

is often a question (as in the sura Joseph) or a moral or theological assertion (also in

the sura Joseph, and in the example of the sura 5:69), or a quotation, somethingwhich has to make the reader/listener think and take up a position.

We understand now why the Qur‘anic text seems often so disordered, at a simple

reading: the ideas do not succeed one another in a progressive linear continuity, as

we are used to in the logical and rhetorical tradition inherited from the Greeks, butthey match at a distance, in a complicated set of symmetries. The apparent disorderis not the result of a lack of composition, but on the contrary the result of a very

sophisticated composition, according to a rhetoric wide-spread in the antique world

of the Middle East, but later forgotten, including by the Arabs, most probably under

the influence of the Hellenistic culture.

An interpretation of the text according to its literary context

The rhetorical analysis has not only an aesthetic purpose: as with any exegetical

method, it aims above all at a better understanding of the text. The traditional

commentaries proceed mostly by comment verse by verse: every verse is explained

for itself, usually without taking into account the immediate literary context of the

verse. Now we know the danger of taking a sentence or a verse out of its context. In


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the Qur‘anic commentaries, the literary context is generally replaced by thehistorical or supposed historical context of the asbāb al-nuzūl. At best, the wholeQur‘an is considered as the literary context of a verse, according to the method of

‗the comment on the Qur‘an by the Qur‘an‘ (tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi-l-Qurʾān): a verseis explained by another verse taken somewhere else in the Book. The relevance of

such an explanation depends obviously on the ingenuity and perspicacity of the

commentator.

As an example, let us here indicate a particularly important case, where the non-

consideration of the literary context of a verse brought the classical exegetical

tradition and even the modern one, to interpret this verse in a totally erroneous way.

Verse 2:106 is repeatedly instanced as the Qur‘anic foundation of the exegetical

theory of abrogation (nāsikh wa mansūkh) according to which a Qur‘anic verse canabrogate another Qur‘anic verse, supposed to be chronologically earlier: ‗Forwhatsoever verse We cancel or cause to forget We bring a better or the like ‘ (transl.

R. Bell). But if this verse is read in its literary context, it can immediately be seen

that it is part of a long polemic with the Jews who refuse to believe that God could

send a prophet and a revelation outside of the one chosen people, the Jewish people.Not only did Muhammad pretend to be a prophet, but he also claimed authority to

quote the Torah and modify it. Thus it is that God, in verse 2:106, backs his prophetup by affirming that he can very well abrogate or ignore certain passages of the

Torah because something better will be sent down i.e. the verses of the Qur‘an. The

abrogation here does not mean replacing one verse of the Qur‘an by another verse ofthe Qur‘an but rather replacing certain verses of the Torah by those of the Qur‘an.

The other two verses (16:101, 13:39) which are also invoked to justify the

abrogation method are in a similar situation; their context is that of a polemic withthe Jews regarding the Torah and do not refer to the Qur‘an. Several Muslim

commentators of the late nineteen century (Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, d. 1898) and thetwentieth century (ʿAbdullāh Yūsuf ʿAlī, d. 1953; Abū al-Aʿlā Mawdūdī, d. 1979;Muḥammad Asad, d. 1992) denounced the misinterpretation of verse 2:106... but in

vain. This doctrine continues to circulate as a quasi-dogmatic certitude. A Muslim

researcher, Aḥmad Ḥasan, in an article on the question of abrogation published in

1962, expresses his astonishment: ‗In view of the evident context of the verse under

reference [2:106]... it looks strange that some of the most eminent authorities oftafsīr have missed the central point of this verse‘.17 We must conclude that the

abrogation theory has no foundation in the Qur‘an; it is an innovation of the jurists( fuqahā‟), belonging to the fiqh, not to the tafsīr . The example of verse 2:106

demonstrates the weakness of interpreting a verse in isolation, without considering

its literary context, and also the shortcomings of many of the ‗occasions ofrevelation‘; those invoked to explain verse 2:106 are obviously artificial.


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Sura 101, ‘The Crashing Blow’

In this first example, we shall follow step by step the work of analysis of the

structure of the text, in several successive stages.

Table 1. Sura 101, the Members18

1 The Crashing Blow.2 What is the Crashing Blow?3 And what will explain to you what is the Crashing Blow?4 On a day when people will be like scattered moths,5 and the mountains will be like carded wool.6–7

Then as for him whose balance is heavy, he will be in a pleasant life,8–9 but as for him whose balance is light, his mother will be the abyss.10 And what will explain to you what it is?11 A blazing fire.

On the first table, the text has been rewritten, its members superimposed in the style

of poetry. A member is a short unit of sense, usually a syntagma, but sometimes,

like here, a single word (verse 1: al-qāriʿa) or two words (verse 11).

At a second level (table 2) it is noticed that certain members can be regrouped inparallel pairs.

Table 2. Sura 101, the Segments

1 The Crashing Blow.

2W HAT IS THE C RASHING B LOW ?

3

and what will explain to you WHAT IS THE C RASHING B LOW ? 4 On a day when PEOPLE WILL BE LIKE SCATTERED MOTHS,5 and THE MOUNTAINS WILL BE LIKE CARDED WOOL.

6-7 Then AS FOR HIM WHOSE BALANCE IS HEAVY , HE WILL BE IN A PLEASANT LIFE , 8-9 but AS FOR HIM WHOSE BALANCE IS LIGHT , HIS MOTHER WILL BE THE ABYSS .

10 And what will explain to you what it is?

11 A blazing fire.

The members 1, 10 and 11 remain isolated, the others form parallel pairs orbimember segments: verses 1 and 11 contain only one or two terms (not a sentence);

verses 2 and 3 take up a similar question, slightly modified; verses 4 and 5 areconstructed grammatically in the same manner, and have a similar meaning: on the


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Day of Judgment, the people are scattered just as the mountains explode; verses 6–7and 8–9 are equally of the same grammatical construction but of opposite meaning.The whole is thus composed of six segments: three of a single member, and three of

two. Now it is a rule of Semitic rhetoric that the higher level of segments, to becalled the piece, cannot contain more than three segments. In fact it is seen (table 3)

that these six segments can regroup themselves in two pieces of three segments.

Table 3. Sura 101, the Pieces

A 1 The Crashing Blow

B 2 W HAT IS the Crashing Blow? 3 AND WHAT WILL EXPLAIN TO YOU WHAT IS the Crashing Blow?

C 4 On a day when people will be like scattered moths,5 and the mountains will be like carded wool.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A‘ 6-7 Then as for him whose balance is heavy, he will be in a pleasant life,

8-9 but as for him whose balance is light, his mother will be the abyss.

B‘ 10 A ND WHAT WILL EXPLAIN TO YOU WHAT it IS ?

C‘ 11 A blazing fire.

At first, the two pieces seem to be composed in a parallel composition

(ABC/A‘B‘C‘): one term appears in the first segments A–A‘ (‗the Crashing Blow‘ /

‗the abyss‘, at the end of verse 9), followed by a question in the second segments B–

B‘ (‗what will explain to you…‘) and its reply in the third segments C–C‘ (‗a day‘ /‗a blazing fire‘).

But more numerous signs of composition show that the two pieces are above all setout in inverted parallelism (ABC/C‘B‘A‘) (see table 4). At the two ends (A–A‘)

isolated terms appear: ‗the Crashing Blow‘ (evoking a cosmic upheaval) / ‗a blazingfire‘ (evoking Hell). The correspondence of these two extreme terms which framethe whole sura is emphasized by their assonance: q‡rIʿA/ḥ‡mIyA. In median

position B–B‘ appear questions, partly identical. In central position, C–C‘, appear

two segments, each one of strictly parallel structure. Moreover, the two segments

form between them a complementary parallelism: the first (C) describes the

cataclysm of the Last Day, the second (C‘) the Judgment. From the point of view ofrhetoric, the sura is thus constituted of a single part , evoking the Day of Judgment intwo complementary pieces, set out in a mirror composition or chiasmus, the first

describing the cosmic upheaval of this day, the second the Judgment and its

retribution.


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Table 4. Sura 101, the Mirror Composition

A – 1 THE CRASHING BLOW (q‡rIʿA)

B =2

What is the Crashing Blow?= 3 AND WHAT WILL EXPLAIN TO YOU WHAT IS the Crashing Blow?

C + 4 On a day when people will be like scattered moths,+ 5 and the mountains will be like carded wool.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

C‘ + 6-7 Then as for him whose balance is heavy, he will be in a pleasant life,+ 8-9 but as for him whose balance is light, his mother will be the abyss.

B‘ =10

A ND WHAT WILL EXPLAIN TO YOU WHAT IT IS ?

A‘ – 11 A BLAZING FIRE (ḥ‡mIyA)!

To show the difference between the synchronic approach of the rhetorical analysis

and the diachronic approach of the historical criticism, let us quote Richard Bell‘s

comment to this sura:19

This surah is a fragment, or a collection of fragments. Vv. 1–4 [=1–5

in Vulgate version] were probably an explanation of the word al-

qāriʿa which occurs in 69,4. Whether vv. 5, 6 [6–9] originally formed

part of the passage is doubtful. They may have been added later or

they may have been removed from Surah 69, being replaced by what

now stands there at v. 19 ff. […]. Vv. 7, 8 [10, 11] are certainly of thenature of a gloss to the word ḥāwiya, v. 8 [11], whether added by

Muhammad himself, or by a later hand, may be left undecided […].

From the point of view of the Semitic rhetoric, this sura is perfectly built and formsvery clearly a coherent unity. There seems to be no need to deconstruct it in several

fragments. As regards the rhetorical characteristics of this sura, we havedistinguished four textual levels: nine members, six segments, two pieces, one part.

We met two of the three figures of composition used in Semitic rhetoric: the

parallelism (at the level of the segments and the pieces) and the mirror composition

(at the level of the part). We saw close symmetries: two synonymic (2–3; 4–5) and

one antithetic (6–9); and two remote symmetries (1//11 and 3//10).


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Sura 5, ‘The Table’, v. 15-19

The long fifth sura approaches highly varied subjects. It consists, at the upper level,

in two large sections (1–71/72–120), each containing three sub-sections, arranged

according to a mirror composition, in the following way:

A (1–26)

B (27–50)C (51–71)

C‘ (72–86)B‘ (87–108)

A‘ (109–120)

As it is not possible to show here the detailed analysis of all the fifth sura, 20 we will

only analyse an extract (verses 15–19), but a theologically important one, since it

presents Muhammad as the messenger sent by God to ‗the people of the Book‘, Jews

and Christians, to rectify their doctrinal errors on God, on Christ, and on themselves.Without entering into too much technical detail at the lower textual levels

(segments, pieces),21 we will examine the upper level of the passage. It consists of

three parts, arranged in a ring composition: two short parts frame a larger central

part (see table 5).

The three parts (15–16/17–18/19) are arranged concentrically: the outer parts (15–

16 and 19) match one another, as do the two sub-parts of the central part (17 and18). The outer parts (15–16 and 19) share the following correspondences: each is of

two pieces; the first pieces (15a–d and 19a–e) begin in exactly the same way:

‗People of the Book! Our Messenger has come to you; he clarifies to you‘ (15a–b;

19a–b). The subject of the sending of the Prophet for a mission of explanation,

introduced at the beginning of the passage, thus reappears at the end. The secondpieces (15e–16 and 19f –g) begin with ‗came to you‘, each time followed by twoterms qualifying the Messenger (Muhammad) in connection with the message which

he brings: ‗a light and a clear Scripture‘ (15e) and ‗a herald and a warner‘ (19f).

Both extreme parts thus concern the mission of the Prophet as Messenger of God to

clarify the Scriptures. We can read them very well in a logical continuity. But the

first part is suddenly interrupted by a central part (17–18) which changes the theme:later the theme of the first part is resumed in the third part.

The central part (17–18) is formed by two parallel sub-parts (17 and 18), each of two

pieces. The first segment of each of the first pieces contains a profession of faith by

the People of the Book: the Christians affirm the divinity of ‗the Messiah, son of

Mary‘ (17b), and Jews and Christians claim to be ‗children of God and his beloved‘(18a–b). The Prophet is then called to reply, ‗Say‘, by reminding his interlocutors


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both of their human frailty (18c–d) and of the Messiah‘s weakness (if God sowished, he could be annihilated, 17d). Then follows theological assertions: God‘suniversal sovereignty is repeated in an identical formula (17e and 18g): ‗And God‘s

is the possession of the heavens and the earth and what is between them‘. God‘s freewill is attested, first as Creator (‗He creates what he wills‘, 17f), and then as Judge

(‗He pardons who he will, and he chastises who he will‘, 18e-f). The central partthus expresses clearly what the initial piece of the passage announced: that the

Prophet clarifies things hidden by the people of the Book (the omnipotence of thedivine will), and that he effaces other things (as the divine filiation of Christ and of

the Jewish and Christian believers).

Table 5. Sura 5:15 –19

15a PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, b OUR MESSENGER HAS COME TO YOU; c HE CLARIFIES TO YOU

much of what you have hidden of the Scriptures d and effaces many things.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------e Surely, CAME TO YOU from God A LIGHT AND A CLEAR SCRIPTURE; 16a through this, God

guides those who observe his good pleasure on the ways of peace, b and he brings them fromdarkness out into light with his permission, c and he guides them to a straight path.

17a Surely, they have misbelieved, who said, b ‗God is the Messiah, the son of Mary!‘c Say, ‗Who could prevent God, d if He wishes to destroy the Messiah, the son of Mary,

and his mother, and all those who are on earth?‘----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- e A ND GOD‟S IS THE POSSESSION OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH AND WHAT IS BETWEEN THEM . f He creates what He will, g AND GOD IS OVER EVERYTHING POWERFUL. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

18a And the Jews and the Christians have said, b ‗We are children of God and His beloved.‘ cSay, ‗So why does He chastise you for your sins? d No, you are human beings, of His

creation.‘

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- e He forgives those he will, f and he chastises those he will.g A ND GOD‟S IS THE POSSESSION OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH AND WHAT IS BETWEEN THEM .h And to him is what is to come.

19a

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, b

NOW THERE HAS COME TO YOU OUR MESSENGER.

c

HE MAKESCLEAR TO YOU, after a break of the messengers, d so that you will not say, e ‗There came not

to us a herald or a warner!‘ -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------f However, CAME TO YOU A HERALD AND A WARNER . g AND GOD IS POWERFUL OVER EVERYTHING.


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Finally, the whole passage can also be presented in a mirror way (see table 6): thecentral part 17–18 is framed by both extreme parts, but as this central part consistsitself of two parallel subsections, the whole passage can be represented as a mirror

composition or chiasmus (AB/B‘A‘). A repetition underlines this composition: at theend of the first side of the chiasmus (17g) appears a theological assertion identically

repeated at the end of the second side (19g): ‗and God is over everything powerful‘.This sentence concludes each of both sides arranged in mirror.

Table 6. Sura 5:15 –19, the Mirror Composition

A

15a PEOPLE OF THE SCRIPTURE, b HAS COME TO YOU OUR MESSENGER; c HE CLARIFIES TO YOU

much of what you have hidden of the Scriptures d and effaces many things.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------e Surely, CAME TO YOU from God A LIGHT AND A CLEAR SCRIPTURE; 16a through this, God guides

those who observe his good pleasure on the ways of peace, b and he brings them fromdarkness out into light with his permission, c and he guides them to a straight path.

B17a Surely, they have misbelieved, who said, b ‗God is the Messiah, the son of Mary!‘c Say, ‗Who could prevent God, d if He wishes to destroy the Messiah, the son of Mary,

and his mother, and all those who are on earth?‘

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- e A ND GOD‟S IS THE POSSESSION OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH AND WHAT IS BETWEEN THEM . f He creates what He will, g AND GOD IS OVER EVERYTHING POWERFUL.

B‘ 18a And the Jews and the Christians have said,b ‗We are children of God and His beloved.‘ cSay, ‗So why does He chastise you for your sins? d No, you are human beings, of his

creation.‘-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------e He forgives those he will,f and he chastises those he will.g A ND GOD‟S IS THE POSSESSION OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH AND WHAT IS BETWEEN THEM .h And to him is what is to come.

A‘ 19a PEOPLE OF THE BOOK, b NOW THERE HAS COME TO YOU OUR MESSENGER. c HE MAKES

CLEAR TO YOU, after a break of the messengers, d so that you will not say, e ‗There came not

to us a herald or a warner!‘ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------f However, CAME TO YOU A HERALD AND A WARNER.g AND GOD IS POWERFUL OVER EVERYTHING.


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The Fātiḥa

Grammatically, the sura al-Fātiḥa is divided in three parts: a first part of nominal

sentences (1–4), a second of two verbs of the same shape (5), and a third one,entirely commanded by the initial verb ihdinā. These three parts group together

members which are semantically related to each other. They are the three rhetorical

pieces of the sura.

Table 7. The Fātiḥa, first Piece

A – 1 In the name of God, the Mercyful, the Compassionate.

B = 2 Praise to God, Lord of the worlds,

A’ – 3 the Merciful, the Compassionate,

B’ = 4 Master of the Day of Judgment.

In the first piece (table 7), we notice a correspondence between members 1 and 3,partially identical, and members 2 and 4 which contain a term of divine sovereignty

(Lord/Master) followed by a complement. The piece thus consists of two parallel

segments, the first members of which correspond to each other, and also the secondmembers.

Table 8. The Fātiḥa, third Piece

– 6 Guide us to the straight path,

– 7a the path of those whom You have blessed,

=b

not [ghayr ] [of those] who incur anger,= c nor [wa lā] are astray.

The members 6 and 7a of the third piece (table 8) form a complementary parallel

segment; the second member explains the first one: the straight path is the one of

those whom God has blessed. The members 7b and 7c both begin with a negation

(ghayr/wa lā) and are synonymic. Both members thus form a piece of two

antithetical segments: the first one speaking about the straight path, the second ofthat of the misled. But other correspondences allow the appearance of a mirrorcomposition (table 9).


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Table 9. The Fātiḥa, the Mirror Composition of the third Piece

A – 6 GUIDE us to the straight path,

B = 7a the path of those whom You have blessed [ʿalay-him],

B‘ = b not [of those] who incur anger [ʿalay-him],

A‘ – c nor ARE ASTRAY.

Those who ‗are astray‘ (A‘) corresponds, by antithesis, to the first term: ‗guide us‘

(A). The terms of the closer members, B and B‘, have antithetical terms (‗those

whom You have blessed‘ / ‗those who incur anger‘), and end by the same formulaʿalay-him.

Table 10. The Fātiḥa, central Piece.

+ 5a You we worship,

+ b and You we ask for help.

The central piece (table 10) is made of one single segment. Each of the two

members begins with the same term ‗You‘, and continues with two verbs of thesame form and same semantic field: to worship and to ask for help are bothfundamental forms of the prayer.

The structure of every level of the text appears through indicators of composition

which are:

identical terms: ‗God‘, repeated twice (1 and 2), ‗the Merciful, the

Compassionate‘ (1 and 3), ‗You‘ (5a and b), ‗the path‘ (6 and 7a), ‗ʿalay-him‘

(7a and b);

or synonymic terms: ‗Lord‘ (2) / ‗Master‘ (4). Both negations at the beginning of

the last two members: ghayr (7b) / wa lā (7c);

or antithetical terms: ‗guide us‘ (6) ↔ ‗are astray‘ (7c); ‗those whom you have

blessed‘ (7a)↔ ‗who incur anger‘ (7b);

or paronymical terms (= almost homonymous): AR-RAḤMān / AR-RAḤīM (the

diverse forms derived of the same Arabic root form easily paronymes);

or assonant terms: both extreme pieces (1–4 and 6–7c) have final assonant

terms: iD-DĪN // aḌ-ḌāllĪN.We thus obtain a sura consisting of three pieces disposed in a ring composition (seetable 11): two pieces of two segments frame a piece of a single segment. The central

piece connects perfectly both extreme pieces: its first member (‗we worship‘) refersto what precedes, which is entirely a prayer of worship of God with some of his

most beautiful names, and its second member announces what follows, which is


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entirely a demand to be guided on the straight path and protected from the path ofthose who are astray.

As we have seen before, the centre of ring compositions always contains particular

features, that the Biblical exegete Nils W. Lund has theorized in a series of ‗laws‘ in

his reference book Chiasmus in the New Testament (1942).22 The first one of these

laws is that ‗the centre is always the turning point‘, which is revealed to be perfectlytrue in the Fātiḥa, since the centre makes the transition between the first piece and

the third one. But the centre has generally also a particular importance as a key to

understanding the entire text. Here, the centre declares clearly what the Fātiḥa is: a

prayer, in its two fundamental forms, worship and demand. It opens the Qur‘an with

a prayer, corresponding to both final prayers of suras 113 and 114, which enclose

the Book by a liturgical inclusion.

Table 11. The Ring Composition of the Fātiḥa

A – 1 In the name of God, the Mercyful, the Compassionate.

B = 2 Praise to God, Lord of the worlds,

A‘ – 3 the Merciful, the Compassionate,

B‘ = 4 Master of the Day of Judgment. [iD- DĪN ]

+ 5a You we worship,

+ b and You we ask for help. [- ĪN ]

A – 6 GUIDE us to the straight path,

B = 7a the path of those whom You have blessed [ʿalay-him],

B‘ = b not [of those] who incur anger [ʿalay-him],

A‘ –

c

nor ARE ASTRAY. [a Ḍ- ḌāllĪN ]


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Sura 12, ‘Joseph’, v. 35-42

The sura ‗Joseph‘ is entirely composed according to a mirror composition (table

12)23

.Table 12. The Mirror Composition of Sura 12

A Prologue 1-3

B Vision of Joseph 4-7

C Joseph's disputes with his brothers: guile of the brothers against Joseph 8-18

D Joseph‘s relative promotion 19-22

E Attempt of Joseph‘s seduction by the woman 23-34

F Joseph in prison, interpreter of the visions of both prisoners,

and prophet of monotheism 35-42

F‘ Joseph in prison, interpreter of the visions of the king 43-49

E‘ Outcome of the seduction of the woman: Joseph rehabilitated 50-53

D‘ Joseph‘s definitive promotion 54-57

C‘ Joseph‘s disputes with his brothers: Joseph‘s guile to his brothers 58-98

B‘ Fulfillment of Joseph‘s vision 99-101

A‘ Epilogue 102-111

We shall examine here only the passage F, quasi-centre in the structure of the

narrative, before this one again follows the curve towards its outcome (see table 13).

Passage F is bounded by the synonymic extreme terms: ‗they should imprison him

for a time‘ (35c) / ‗he remained in the prison for several years‘ (42d). The passage

consists of three parts, arranged in ring composition (A/X/A‘): A- both dreams ofthe prisoners and their request of interpretation (35–37d); X- the prophetic-

monotheist preaching of Joseph (37e–40); A‘- the interpretation of both dreams by

Joseph (41–42).


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Table 13. The quasi-central Passage of Sura 12

– 35a Then it appeared to them,– b after they had seen the signs,

– c

that THEY SHOULD IMPRISON HIM FOR A TIME .= 36a And entered the prison with him two youths.= b Said one of them: ‗ I see myself pressing wine‘,= c and said the other : ‗ I see myself carrying bread on my head from which the birds are eating‘.

+d ‗INFORM US OF THE INTERPRETATION THEREOF

+ e for indeed we see you to be a virtuous man.‘---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- – 37a He said: ‗There will not come to you any food with which you are provided – b but I SHALL INFORM YOU OF THE INTERPRETATION THEREOF – c before it comes to you.

= d THAT is among what my Lord has taught me.

= 37e Verily I have forsaken THE CREED of a people who do not believe in God = f and who in the hereafter do disbelieve.

+ 38a And I have followed THE CREED of MY FATHERS, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.+ b It was not for us to associate with God anything.

– c THAT is part of the bounty of God to us and to the people. – d BUT MOST OF THE PEOPLE DO NOT SHOW GRATITUDE.

--------------------------------------------= 39a O my two prison mates!= b Are diverse lords better= c or God the One, the Victorious?-------------------------------------------

+ 40a What you worship instead of Him are mere names + b which you and YOUR FATHERS have named ,+ c for which God has sent down no authority.

= d The decision belongs to God alone.= e He has commanded that you serve non but Himself.

+f

THAT is the upright RELIGION .+ g BUT MOST OF THE PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW.

+ 41a O my two prison mates!+ b AS FOR ONE OF YOU,+ c he will serve wine to his MASTER

– d and AS FOR THE OTHER,– e he will be crucified– f and birds will eat from his head.

= e The matter is decided

= f concerning which you inquire.‘ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------–42a And he said to the one of them who he thought was to escape :– b ‗ M ENTION ME TO YOUR MASTER.‘

= c But Satan caused him to forget to MENTION HIM TO HIS MASTER.= d So HE REMAINED IN THE PRISON FOR SEVERAL YEARS .


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Both extreme parts will not be analysed here in detail. The reader will see forhimself the correspondences between the symmetric terms: in small italic, thecorresponding terms in the members of a same segment; in small capitals, the

corresponding terms between the segments or the pieces; in big capitals, thecorresponding terms between the parts. Let us notice simply a symmetry of

composition of both extreme parts, each built in two pieces, the first pieces (35–36and 41) counting three segments, the second (37a–d and 42) two segments. Both

extreme parts are in continuity, but the stream of the narrative is interrupted by thecentral part, whose theme is quite different. This corresponds to the second law of

Lund according to which ‗at the centre there is often a change in the trend of

thought, and an antithetical idea is introduced.24 After this the original trend is

resumed and continued until the system is concluded. For want of a better term, weshall designate this feature the law of the shift at the centre‘.25 This discontinuity led

certain scholars, partisans of historical criticism, as Richard Bell,26 to consider the

central passage as a later editorial addition. Numerous centres of concentric

constructions in the Qur‘an have been considered in the same way, and for the samereason, while it is a very common process in Semitic rhetoric, to place in the centreof a system an idea which interrupts the thread of the speech, so as better to draw the

attention of the reader/listener to a particularly important point.

The composition of the central part (37e–40) is particularly well polished. It is

arranged in its turn in ring composition: two pieces frame a brief central piece made

of a single segment (39). The whole part is bounded by the synonymic extremeterms: ‗creed‘ (milla, 37e and 38a) / ‗religion‘ (dīn, 40f). These terms announce the

entire meaning of the preaching, which is an invitation to abandon ‗the creed of a

people who do not believe in God‘ (37e), and to convert to ‗the upright religion‘(40f). The name of ‗God‘ appears once in every segment of the part (with the

exception of the last segment 40f –g). Both extreme pieces end with synonymic finalterms: ‗But most of the people do not show gratitude‘ (38d) / ‗But most of thepeople do not know‘ (40g). ‗My fathers‘, in the central segment of the f irst piece

(38a) corresponds to ‗your fathers‘, in the first segment of the third piece (40b). We

can consider it as an application of the fourth law of Lund , according to which

‗There are also many instances of ideas, occurring at the centre of one system and

recurring in the extremes of a corresponding system, the second system evidentlyhaving been constructed to match the first. We shall call this feature the law of shift

from centre to the extremes‟.27

Here, Joseph strongly sets out the religion of hisfathers against that of the fathers of his prison companions.

In the first piece, Joseph tells his conversion to the only God; in the third piece, he

invites his prison mates to do the same. In the centre, Joseph asks them the question

which has to determine their choice: are multiple gods better that the Only,Almighty God? Two frequent features of the centres of rhetorical ring compositions


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are that they often contain a question, or a solemn moral or theological assertion,which invites the reader/listener to take a position. Now, we have here a cleartheological question about monotheism, which concerns the core of the Qur‘an and

the Islamic faith. Placed in the centre of a passage situated itself in the quasi-centreof the sura, before the curve of the narrative goes up again, this question is thus

emphasized particularly, and it gives its specifically Qur‘anic meaning to Joseph‘snarrative. In the book of Genesis, Joseph is one of the twelve patriarchs of the

Jewish people, but not a prophet. By his monotheistic preaching, he undoubtedlytakes on the features of a prophet, in the Qur‘an. Far from being a piece introduced

later on, somewhat artificially in Joseph‘s Qur‘anic narrative, this monotheist speech

retells the narrative of Genesis, reorienting it according to a typically Qur‘anic

theological perspective. Our rhetorical analysis confirms thus what the Finnishresearcher Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila had already seen perfectly:

The Prison episode which is the lowest point in the career of Joseph

marks the turning point of the Story. It is around this episode that the

whole story seems to have been composed. It is both thematically andstructurally the central point; — Thematically, it has of course

enormous weight, as it propagates the same message as the whole of

the Qur‘ān, viz. monotheism (the Prison Sermon, vv. 37–40). Theweight of this sermon is also seen in that here the person of

Muḥammad shines through in the story of Joseph… It is also the onlyscene in which Joseph acts as a prophet and not a mere, though

divinely inspired, interpreter of dreams. This scene is the raison d‘être

of the whole Surah, without which it would merely be one of asāṭīr al-

awwalīn.28

Let us finally notice a repetition of terms. At the end of the first part (37d) and at the

end of both symmetric extreme pieces of the central part (38c and 40f) appears amember introduced by ‗that‘ (dhālika): in the first case, the member underlines

Joseph‘s charisma as interpreter of dreams (‗That is among what my Lord taught

me‘), in the second case, he underlines the monotheist faith of Joseph (‗That is partof the bounty of God to us and to the people‘), and in the third case, its monotheist

prophetic preaching (‗That is the upright religion‘). So are underlined, by the same

final term in three rhetorical units of the passage, the three characteristics of Joseph

in the Qur‘an: the interpreter of the dreams, the believer and the prophet of

monotheism.


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Sura 5, ‘The Table’, v. 65–71

Table 14. Sura 5:65 –71

65a If THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK had believed and been pious, b we would have wipedout from them their bad actions, c and we would have let them enter to the gardens of delight.66a And if they had followed the Torah and the Gospel b and what has BEEN SENT DOWN TO

THEM from their Lord, c they would have eaten of what is above them and of what is under

their feet. d Among them is A MODERATE COMMUNITY, e but [for] MANY AMONG

THEM , WHAT THEY DO is bad!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------67a Prophet, communicate what has been sent down to you from your Lord! b And

if you did not do this,

c

you would not communicate his message!

d

And God willprotect you from men. e Surely, God does not guide the unbelieving people.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------68a Say, ‗O people of the Book, you do not rely on anything b as long as you do not follow the

Torah and the Gospel c and what HAS BEEN SENT DOWN TO YOU from your Lord.‘ d And

certainly makes MANY AMONG THEM grow e what has been sent down to you from your

Lord, f in rebellion and unbelief. g And do not torment yourself for unbelieving people.

69a Surely, those who believe, b and THOSE WHO PRACTICE-JUDAISM, AND

THE SABIANS AND THE CHRISTIANS, c whoever believes in God and the LastDay d and does good works e – there is no fear for them, f and they will not be

afflicted.

70a Surely, we have received the covenant of the CHILDREN OF ISRAEL, b and we have

SENT TO THEM messengers. c Each time CAME TO THEM a messenger d with what their souls

did not want, e some they treated as liars, f and some they killed.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------71a They reckoned there would be no test, b and they became blind and deaf. c Then God

CAME BACK TO THEM. d Then became blind and deaf MANY AMONG THEM . e But God is

well-seeing WHAT THEY DO.

Like the preceding example, these verses of the fifth sura, al- Māʾida, form a passage of three parts where the outer parts, which are in correspondence, frame a

central part. The ‗People of the Book‘ appear at the start of each part: in 65a as such;in more detail in the central part (69b) and, finally, reduced to the ‗children of Israel‘

in the third part (70a). In the outer parts, the People of the Book and the children ofIsrael are the ungrateful beneficiaries of God‘s care. In the first part, God sends

down the Qur‘an to them (66b, 68c); in the third part he sends messengers (70b–c)

and he himself ‗came back to them‘ after their first act of infidelity (71c).Nevertheless they have not responded to the divine benevolence but rather rebelled

and not believed (65a, 68f –g), treated the prophets as liars and killed them (70e–f).


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The outer parts of the passage end with the words ‗what they do‘: the way thePeople of the Book act is condemned (66e) for God knows well what they do andsees it is wrong (71e). However, the outer pieces as well as the outer parts have the

words ‗many among them‘ (66e, 68d, 71d) as their last or penultimate terms. Not allthe People of the Book or the children of Israel, therefore, are rebels, but only many

of them. There are some who are a faithful ‗moderate community‘ (66d). This iswhat the central part (69) vigorously affirms: the Jews, the Sabians and the

Christians have all access to salvation (‗there is no fear for them, and they will notbe afflicted‘, 69e–f), just as the Muslim believers, provided that ‗they believe in God

and the Last Day and do good works‘. This solemn assertion is a theological, trans-

historical one, while the parts which frame it allude to particular situations and

attitudes based on the contingency of history: ‗If the People of the Book hadbelieved... if they had followed the Torah and the Gospel... for many among them

what they do is bad...‘, the Qur‘an stirs up the rebellion and unbelief of many of

them, treating the prophets as liars and killing some of them etc. The same verse

5:69 is also found in sura 2:62. According to the classical commentators,29 verse2:62 has been abrogated by verse 3:85: ‗And whoever desires a religion other than

Islam, it will not be received by him, and in the hereafter he will be among the

losers‘. Rhetorical analysis, however, demonstrates the opposite by pointing out the

importance of this verse because of its central situation in 5:69. Fazlur Rahmanstrongly rejects the traditional interpretation:

In both these verses [2:62, 5:69], the vast majority of Muslim

commentators exercise themselves fruitlessly to avoid having to admit

the obvious meaning: that those — from any section of mankind —

who believe in God and the Last Day and do good deeds are saved.30

There is a frequent tendency in classical exegesis to minimize the importance of

verses which seem to contradict those which frame them, or even to abrogate theseverses. But the fact that they are found at the centre of ring compositions, gives

them, on the contrary, enhanced importance. These are the central verses meant to

explain the others, and not the other way around!

Since the Medinan suras are later than the Mekkan verses, Medinan verses are

thought to abrogate Mekkan verses according to the abrogation theory. However the

Sudanese reformist Maḥmūd Muḥammad Ṭaha had proposed turning things around;

since the Mekkan verses have a more universal, theological and broad-mindedperspective, these verses should abrogate the Medinan verses which are profoundlyinfluenced by the very special historical context of the foundation of the first

Muslim State. But it can be seen that both types of verses are also found in the

Medinan suras, such as the fifth sura, al- Māʾida, which is, in my opinion, the final

word of the Qur‘anic revelation.31 Textual analysis, according to Semitic rhetoric,


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enables us to distinguish the different semantic levels in the suras: certain verseshave a universal ethical or theological significance and a timeless value. Theseverses seem to appear mostly (if not always) at the centre of concentric rhetorical

compositions. The peripheral verses have a more limited significance and aremarked by concrete historical circumstances — those surrounding the foundation of

the first Muslim community — and have a cultural context extremely different fromour times. These verses should not be ‗abrogated‘ but they should be understood in

the historical context of the foundation of the Muslim community and not be givenan absolute and permanent validity. I agree with the opinion of the late Naṣr Abū

Zayd (d. 2010): ‗The confusion between what is dated, whose meaning is linked to a

specific historical event, and what is stable and permanent in religious texts always

leads to aberrations.‘32

Conclusion

The application of rhetorical analysis to the Qur‘an demonstrates clearly that thesacred book of Islam is composed in accordance with literary rules known by theArab society addressed by the muhammadian preaching. The Qur‘an expresses itself

not only in the Arabic language of its public, but also according to the mental andliterary categories which were familiar to them, and which were common, as it

seems, in all the Semitic world of Antiquity. Qur‘anic studies here joinanthropology. In her latest work, the English anthropologist, Mary Douglas,

investigates in particular the ring composition in diverse cultures of Antiquity of the

oriental Mediterranean Sea, showing it as a very wide-spread mode of expression inthis area, in high times.33 Biblical studies made the most detailed analysis of it, but

recent research reveals that this rhetoric long predated the Bible (present in

Pharaonic, Mesopotamian and other texts of the Middle East) and that it is alsosubsequent to it (present in the Qur‘an and the ḥadīth(s)).

This mode of composition constitutes a real rhetorical system which can resolve in a

new and satisfactory way the enigma of the composition or na†m of the Qur‘an. The

few examples analysed in this article are not exceptions: all the Qur‘anic texts which

I have analysed until now follow the same rules of composition.34 This observationopens obviously new perspectives for the interpretation of the text: the context of

every verse, defined by the rhetorical analysis of the text, must play a more essentialrole in the determination of its sense. That is particularly important with regard to

the concentric compositions, with the characteristics of the centre, as a privileged

place in the sense.


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NOTES

1 See Angelika Neuwirth, Studien zur Komposition der mekkanischen Suren, Studien zur

Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients 10, Berlin/New York, Walter de

Gruyter,1981. Pierre Crapon de Caprona, Le Coran : aux sources de la parole oraculaire.Structures rythmiques des sourates mecquoises, Publications Orientalistes de France,Arabiyya 2, Paris,1981. Mustansir Mir, Coherence in the Qur‟ān. A Study of I ṣlāḥī‟s Concept

of Na †m in Taddabur-i Qur‟ān, Indianapolis, American Trust Publications, 1986; ‗The sūra as a unity. A twentieth century development in Qur‘ān exegesis‘, in G.R. Hawting and Adul-Kaher A. Shareef (ed.), Approaches to the Qur‟ān, London/New York, Routledge, 1993,

pp. 211–24. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, ‗Context and internal relationships: keys to quranicexegesis. A study of Sūrat al-Raḥmān (Qur‘ān chapter 55)‘, in G.R. Hawting and Adul-KaherA. Shareef (ed.), Approaches to the Qur‟ān, pp. 71–97. Neal Robinson, Discovering theQur‟an. A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Tex t, London, SCM-Press, 2003; ‗Hands

Outstretched: Towards a Re-reading of S ūrat al-M ā‟ida‘, in Journal of Qur‟anic Studies, vol.3,1, 2001, pp. 1–19. A.H. Mathias Zahniser, ‗Sūra as Guidance and Exhortation: TheComposition of S ūrat al-Nisā‟‘ in A. Afsaruddin and A.H.M. Zahniser (ed.), Humanism,

Culture and Language in the Near East : Studies in Honor of Georg Krotkoff , WinonaLake/Indiana, Eisenbrauns, 1997, pp. 71–85; ‗Major Transitions and thematic Borders in twolong Sūras: al-Baqara and al-Nisā‟‘, in I.J. Boullata (ed.), Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur‟ān, London/Richmond, Curzon Press, 2000, pp. 26–55. Salwa M.S. El-

Awa, Textual Relations in the Qur‟an: Relevance, Coherence and Structure, London-NewYork, Routledge Taylor, 2006.2 See Claude-France Audebert, Al- Ḫ aṭṭābī et l‟inimitabilité du Coran. Traduction et

introduction au Bayān iʿjāz al-Qur ʾān, Damas, Institut français de Damas, 1982, pp. 58–71.For a more detailed historical survey of the question, see the appendix ‗The question of theQur‘an‘s coherence in the history of its exegesis‘, in Michel Cuypers, The Banquet. A

Reading of the fifth S ura of the Qur‟an, Rhetorica Semitica, Miami, Convivium Press, 2009,pp. 493–512.3 See Audebert, Al- Ḫ aṭṭābī et l‟inimitabilité du Coran, pp. 130, 138–39.

4 Ibrahīm Burhān al-Dīn al-Biqāʿī, Na †m al-durar fī tanāsub al-ayāt wa l-suwar , 22 vols.,Cairo, Dār al-kitāb al-islāmī, 1992. 5 Mir, ‗The sūra as a unity‘, p. 212.

6 See Mir, Coherence in the Qur‟ān, pp. 75–84.

7 Saʿīd Ḥawwa, Al- Asās fī l-tafsīr , Cairo, Dār al-Islām, 2003 (6th ed.), pp. 30–1.

8 In 1820, Jebb published Sacred Literature.

9

In 1824 Boys published Tactica Sacra. An attempt to develop, and to exhibit to the eye bytabular arrangements, a general rule of composition prevailing in the Holy Scriptures.10

See an example of each one in Roland Meynet, Rhetorical Analysis. An Introduction to

Biblical Rhetoric, JSOT.S 256, Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1998, pp. 357–58.


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11 See Laetitia Coilliot, Michel Cuypers and Yvan Koenig, ‗La composition rhétorique de

trois textes pharaoniques‘, BIFAO (Bulletin de l‟Institut Français d‟Archéologie Orientale) 109, 2009, pp. 23–59.

12

Roland Meynet, Louis Pouzet, Nayla Farouki and Ahyaf Sinno, Tar īqat al-taḥlīl al-balāghī

wa l-tafsīr. Taḥlīlāt nuṣuṣ min al-kitāb al-muqaddas wa min al-ḥadīth al-nabawī al-sharīf ,Beyrouth, Dar el-Machreq, 1993 (in Arabic); French translation : Rhétorique sémitique.Textes de la Bible et de la Tradition musulmane, Paris, éd. du Cerf, 1998.13

Quintilius divides rhetoric in five parts: Inventio, Dispositio (or structure), Elocutio (style

and figures of speech), Memoria (memorizing of the discourse), Actio (recitation of the

discourse).14

See above note 10.15

Roland Meynet, Traité de rhétorique biblique, Rhétorique sémitique 4, Paris, Lethielleux,2007. An English translation is in progress.16 Cuypers, The Banquet (see note 2). Translated from French : Le Festin. Une lecture de lasourate al- Mâ‟ida, Rhétorique sémitique, Paris, Lethielleux, 2007.17

Let us add that the authors above-mentioned, while recognizing the common error of

interpretation of the verse 2:106, commit another error, claiming that this verse means the

abrogation by the Qur‘an of the entire Torah (and the other Scriptures previous to the Qur‘an)

whereas in many places the Qur‘an recognizes the value of the previous revelations of whichit considers itself the authorized interpreter. The abrogation thus means no more than thereplacement of certain verses or passages of the Torah by those of the Qur‘an, and not theabolition of the entire Torah! For a detailed study of the question of abrogation see Geneviève

Gobillot, ‗L‘abrogation (nâsikh et mansûkh) dans le Coran à la lumière d‘une lectureinterculturelle et intertextuelle‘ and Cuypers, ‗L‘analyse rhétorique, une nouvelle méthodepour l‘exégèse du Coran‘ in Al- Mawāqif, Actes du premier colloque international sur : „LePhénomène religieux, nouvelles Lectures des Sciences sociales et humaines‟ , Mascara 14-16

avril 2008, Publications du Centre Universitaire de Mascara, Algérie, pp. 5–27.

18

This personal translation of the Qur‘anic text is here no more than a tool: it follows as muchas possible the letter of the Arabic text as much as possible.19

Richard Bell, The Qur‟ān. Translation, with a critical re-arrangement of the Surahs,Edinburgh , T. & T. Clark, 1950 (first ed. 1937–39), p. 674.20

For such a detailed analysis, see Cuypers, The Banquet. For the general composition of the

sura, see chap. 13.21

See Cuypers, The Banquet , pp. 144–7.22

These laws are listed in Cuypers, The Banquet , p. 36. The original text is in N.W. Lund,Chiasmus in the New Testament , Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1942,

pp. 40–1. Reprinted as Chiasmus in the New Testament. A Study in the Form and Function ofChiastic Structures, Hendrickson, Peabody MA, 1992.23

For a discussion and justification of this mirror composition, see Cuypers, „Structures

rhétoriques dans le Coran. Une analyse structurelle de la sourate “Joseph” et de quelques


25/25


sourates brèves‟, MIDEO (Mélanges de l‘Institut Dominicain d‘Études Orientales) 22, 1995,

pp. 134–5.24

In this case, the idea is not strictly speaking antithetical, but totally different. The differencerepresents both Joseph‘s charismas: interpreter of the dreams in the extreme parts, prophet in

the central part.25

See Cuypers, The Banquet , p. 36.26

See Bell, The Qur‟ān, p. 217 (‗Vv. 37-41 have certainly also been revised‘).27

See Cuypers, The Banquet , p. 36.28 J. Hämeen-Anttila, ‗ ―We will tell you the best of Storie‖. A study on surah XII‘, StudiaOrientalia 67, Helsinki, 1991, pp. 27–8. The same opinion in Alfred-Louis de Prémare,

Joseph et Muhammad. Le chapitre 12 du Coran, Publications de l‘Université de Provence,1989, p. 96.29 See Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr , Beyrouth, 2000, p.74.30 Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur‟an, p.166, quoted in J. D. Mc Auliffe, Qur‟anic

Christians, p.121. The same interpretation of salvation granted equally to Muslims,

Christians, Jews and ‗Unitarians‘ (Sabians) by the contemporary Pakistani legal scholar,Nasira Iqbal in One World for All, Foundations of a socio-political and cultural Pluralism

from Christian and Muslim Perspectives, A. Bsteh (ed.), Delhi : Vikas Publishing House

PVT. Ltd., 1999, p.148.31

See M. Cuypers, The Banquet , p. 481–7.32 Nasr Abou Zeid, Critique du discours religieux, Sinbad – Actes Sud, Paris, 1999, p.72(quotation translated from this French edition).33

Mary Douglas, Thinking in Circles. An Essay on Ring Composition. Yale University Press,New Haven and London, 2007.34

See my bibliography in The Banquet , p. 517.
http://alkindi.ideo-cairo.org/controller.php?action=SearchEditeur&editeurId=6836http://alkindi.ideo-cairo.org/controller.php?action=SearchEditeur&editeurId=6836http://alkindi.ideo-cairo.org/controller.php?action=SearchEditeur&editeurId=6836http://alkindi.ideo-cairo.org/controller.php?action=SearchEditeur&editeurId=6836

semitic rhetoric as a key to the question of nazm of the qur'anic text

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