Priorities
Sometimes I get a little caught up in technical details when studying the Qur'an. Just putting this little reminder out there...
Which Juzz’ has the most verses?
One of the first things that anyone learns about the holy Qur’ān is that there are 114 chapters of varying length, with the longest being Sūrah al-Baqarah with 286 verses, and the shortest chapters having just 3 verses. So it’s no surprise to anyone that different chapters can have vastly different numbers of verses.
It is also well-known that the Qur’ān is also divided into 30 parts, and these are generally around the same length, measured in terms of pages. Pages are a more reliable indicator of actual length, or “reading time”, than verses, since verses also vary enormously in length.
But one connection I haven’t seen mentioned enough is the variance in the number of verses per part of the Qur’ān. How does the length of each juzz’ compare with the others in terms of the number of verses it contains? Sure, they all span the same number of pages, but certainly a juzz’ consisting of short verses will have more verses in it will have more verses overall than a juzz’ consisting of longer ones. So which juzz’ has the most verses? We can investigate this.
Third Person Imperatives in the Qur’an
It’s always been kind of strange to me how a language can accommodate imperatives for other than the second person.
English, of course, cannot do this. You can only command someone who is right there in front of you. “Listen, you! Stay here! Don’t touch this! Have a good day!” The addressee is always “you”, even if that pronoun doesn’t appear explicitly.
Arabic, on the other hand, is one of the languages that does have this feature. You can issue an order to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Not present? No problem. Just use the third person imperative.
The Qur’an’s Most Flexible Verbs
One cool thing about the Arabic language is that you can take a base “root word” and extract derivative words with related meanings by plugging the letters of the root word into different templates, or “forms”.
I’m not going to get into the details about how this process works here; we can leave that to the linguists. Instead, I’m interested in exploring a specific question: in the Qur’ān, which root verb appears in the most derivative verb forms? In other words: of all the root verbs that appear in the Qur’ān, which one comes in the biggest variety of flavours?
The Middle of the Qur’an
What is the midpoint of the Qur’ān?
(Ok, so this might be somewhat of an artificial question, depending on how much value you give to the way the chapters in the Qur’an are presently ordered. But I think the question still has value regardless! It’s interesting to be able to pin down where we can say, when reading the Qur’ān from start to finish, that we’ve reached the halfway point.)
So, what is the midpoint of the Qur’ān? Well, it turns out, it depends on how we want to define “midpoint”…
Qur’anic Verses in Verses
Let’s start by looking at the very first verse in the Holy Qur’ān.
the Merciful. [Al-Fātiḥah, 1:1]
It’s an interesting verse for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons (and perhaps not the first reason that comes to mind) is that this verse actually contains another complete verse entirely inside of it:
Logical Reasoning and the Torn Shirt
The story of Prophet Yūsuf in the Qur’ān includes an episode that presents an interesting exercise in logical reasoning. In the incident where the ‘Azīz of Egypt finds his wife and Prophet Yūsuf making conflicting claims, a witness speaks up and presents a series of statements that make it possible to reach a conclusion about what happened using a combination of observation (of Prophet Yusuf’s shirt) and logic.
Verses 25 to 28 of Surah #12 Yūsuf mention the following:
Juzz’ Word Clouds
A few years ago, I thought it would be interesting to take all of the words in (the English translation of) each Juzz’ of the Qur’ān and see what they would look like as word clouds. The result would be 30 images, each of which captures the most repeated terms in the corresponding section of the Qur’ān. It would be an easy way to see, at a glance, what each Juzz’ is talking about.
Exceptional Situations
Sometimes, you think you really have reached an understanding of how things work. You get it. The rules have started to make sense.
And then you realize that no, actually, things don’t work the way you think they do, and everything you once believed is now under question.
This might happen in a lot of different contexts, but it can happen extremely often when studying the Arabic language, which is notorious for having exceptions upon exceptions. Now, usually, it’s very clear that a given rule has a lot of exceptions, and that it should be treated more like a general guideline than an actual law. However, there are some cases where something really looks like it might be an absolute rule that you can put your trust in… until you realize it’s not.
Here are some exceptional cases for what might have appeared to be exceptionless rules…
Qur’anic Verses for Stuffy Noses
No, I’m not talking about verses of the Qur’ān that can be used to treat nasal congestion. I’m interested in finding out which verses can be pronounced correctly even when the reciter has a stuffy nose.
There is a property called ghunna that applies to some of the letters in the Qur’ān. Basically, in order to recite a letter with ghunna, the nose has to play a role in the pronunciation; the mouth and throat are not enough to generate the correct sound. There are some verses in the Qur’ān that contain no instances of ghunna. For example, the first verse of Sūrah 113: al-Falaq (if recited correctly) will sound the same whether you pinch your nose or not – try it!
قُلْ أَعُوذُ بِرَبِّ ٱلْفَلَقِ
My question is: how many verses are there in the Qur’ān that have this property?