ibn Harm

Tag: quran

  • Philology (sette)

    A small adendum to the previous post about love of language. To believers “šay” is even more brilliant since the Qur’an repeatedly reads “and he is over all things competent.”Things comes here from “kulli shay(in).” (Wa huwa ‘ala kulli shay’in qadeer)

    So with this adab to start a sentence with “šay” can be understood as “although I know that the all-Mighty has already decreed the matter, ….” So šay in the sentence already delineates a philosophical anchor.

  • On pedagogy and the mihna

    The mihna or “inquisition” was the event that the ruling khalifa of the Muslim empire attacked scholars with the compulsed choice of either accepting the createdness of the Qur’an or rejecting it. Rejection of the doctrine meant imprisonment or worse.

    A pedagogical note can be made that it seems irrational to impose such drastic fate to a theoretical question. It can also be interpreted as the climate of the time being academic.