He placed the Qur'an on his head and said, "O book of God speak. In the course of his reading when he arrived at the following verse, "This book of ours speaks the truth," he stopped reading. It is related on good authority that the Commander of the Faithful, ‘Ali bin Abu Talib was one day reading the Qur'an. Just as the word ‘kateeba' stands for an orderly group of soldiers, the word ‘kitab' stands for a well arranged number of chapters and verses dealing with the commands and prohibitions and instructive events from the past history. The word ‘kitab' etymologically means a well arranged combination of words. It refer to the book other than the Qur'an. Since, the word ‘that' is always used for something distant and never for something close by, the expression ‘zalikal-kitab' meaning ‘that book', does not refer to the Qur'an which is in front of our eyes. The word ‘zalika' used in the verse is a demonstartive pronoun correponding to ‘that' in English. In this instance God has taken oath by two spiritual powers which are the first cause of the Universe and the final point in its evolution, namely the universal intellect and universal soul and by one physical being who hjolds the highest position in His world of creation and who is of His ‘hudud' on earth.īy taking an oath by these three mighty powers God lays emphasis on what He wishes to express by the verse. As a rule, one never takes oath by any thing which is not dignified or dear to him. All such letter known in Arabic as ‘huruf-muqatta-at' are used in the Qur'an for the purpose of taking an oath. ‘Saad and ‘qaaf' and ‘noon' are the specimens of single letters. The least number of such letters used in the Qur'an is one. The largest number of such dis-connected lettes used in the Qur'an is five, ‘Kaaf', ‘haa', ‘yaa', ‘ain', ‘saad' and ‘haa' ‘meem' ‘ain' ‘seen' ‘qaaf' are the specimens of the five dis-connected letters. Although some of these commentators do not believe in the ‘taweel' and are too proud to accept their explanation, in this particular instance, their commentary is very much near to the interpretation of the exponents of the ‘taweel'. Alif they say is taken from the word ‘Allah', ‘laam' from Gabriel and ‘meem' from Mohammed. The Holy Qur'a, says, "Alif, laam, meem zalikat kitabo la raibfeehi." Some of the commentators of the Qur'an explain this verse by saying that ‘alif' ‘laam' ‘meem' mean an oath taken by God. LECTURE ELEVENTH : THE MEANING OF THE MYSTERIOUS LETTERS There is an interesting explanation given by our great Fatimid dai Al- Muayyad Fi Din Shirazi at:
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