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Refutations

Refuting the Orientalist Claim That the Quran Contains Foreign Words Borrowed from Syriac, Hebrew, and Aramaic

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The Orientalist claim that the Quran borrowed its foundational terms from Syriac and Hebrew sources is not a linguistic finding — it is a programmatic attempt to convince the reader that the Quran is the composition of Muhammad ﷺ, who learned these words from Jews and Christians. The claim fails on linguistic, historical, and scholarly grounds.

The Orientalist Theory and Its Goal

The Orientalists accepted the theory put forward by Schwali in his book History of the Quran that the word “Quran” was derived from the Syriac word Qaryana — meaning holy reading and lesson. The prevailing view in Islamic circles is that the word is a noun from the Arabic verb qara’a. The writer of the referenced article points out that both opinions find support in the Quran itself, where the verb qara’a appears repeatedly in the meaning of reading or recitation. He then says: “Perhaps the most appropriate and most acceptable result is that the term Quran was rooted in the Quran itself to represent the Syriac word Qaryana, but it was based on an Arabic source in the form Fa’lan from the verb qara’a.”

Thus the author of the article deviated from the truth after it became clear to him — for the Arabic word is derived from qara’a (to read), and the first surah of the Quran in the chronological order of revelation — according to the Orientalists’ own prepared chronological sequence — begins with the word Iqra’a, an imperative verb from the same root qara’a. This is the same Arabic material from which the word Quran was derived. The writer nonetheless preferred to introduce the arbitrary opinion fabricated by the German orientalist Schwali and those who followed in his footsteps — that the word is derived from Syriac Christian sources based on a Syriac manuscript from the sixth century in the British Museum — sources that no one can provide evidence of their appearance or influence at the time the Holy Quran was revealed.

There is no doubt that the writer aims, by introducing the article with this arbitrary linguistic discussion, to show that there is a close connection between the Holy Quran and the aforementioned sources, and that this connection begins with the word “Quran” itself — which is in fact nothing but a word taken from Syriac — all of this in order to make it easier for the reader to accept the opinions that will be presented in this context.

The Extended Orientalist Argument — Other Quranic Terms

The author of the article continues: “The meaning of the word Quran and the source of the holy book for Muslims cannot be fully clarified without taking into account the use of a number of other terms closely related to the subject, and the matter here is not limited to ‘verse’ and ‘book’ only, but also includes ‘surah,’ ‘remembrance,’ ‘repeated,’ ‘wisdom,’ and others.”

Then he says: “The original meaning of the word ‘verse,’ like the similar word in Hebrew Oth and Syriac Atha, is the sign and evidence and comes as a symbol of an invisible truth” — but he adds: “However, its derivation is not certain.”

After that, he presents the word “surah,” quoting Schwali as saying: It seems to be derived from the Syriac Surta or Surtha, which means the holy book.

He also presents the word “repeated” (mathani), quoting what some orientalists have said — that it is derived from the Hebrew Mishna, and others from the Syriac or Aramaic Mathnitka — but the word, as the author of the article himself confirms, must be influenced by the Arabic word thana, meaning to repeat.

Then the writer comes to the word “wisdom” (hikmah) and says that it may have come from the Aramaic word Hakhma. The writer, as much as he denies that some of these words go back to Hebrew, Syriac, or Aramaic origins, indicates the correctness of the derivation of some of them from these origins.

He traces each of the previously mentioned words and presents their meanings in the Meccan and Medinan verses of the Holy Quran following the method of minimal criticism.

If we contemplate the results that the Orientalists have reached in this research — according to what the author of the article has presented — we find that they have not brought anything new. They have only confirmed what the Muslims have declared: that the words Quran, verse, surah, and book represent units of revelation, and that “the book” means the book of God. Therefore, this discussion only includes what some Orientalists have raised of doubts about the derivation of some words in the Holy Quran and their attribution to Hebrew or Syriac origins — in other words, their attribution to Jewish or Christian origins.

There is no doubt that the goal behind this doubt about the authenticity of the main terms in the Holy Quran and their attribution to Hebrew, Semitic, or Aramaic origins is to lure the reader and pave the way to convince him that the Quran is the invention and composition of Muhammad ﷺ, and that he learned these words from the Jews and Christians.

The Scholars’ Position — Are There Foreign Words in the Quran?

The Consensus on Composition and the Disagreement on Vocabulary

“They agreed that there is nothing in the Quran of foreign constructions, and they agreed that it contains names of foreign languages such as Ibrahim, Noah, and Lot, and they differed as to whether there is anything other than that in foreign languages. Al-Baqillani and al-Tabari denied that, and said that whatever is in it that agrees with foreign languages is from the category of what languages agree on.”

The Chapter: Are There Words in the Quran Outside the Languages of the Arabs?

There is no disagreement among the imams that there is no speech in the Quran composed in the styles of non-Arabs, and that it contains names of people whose language is not Arab — such as Israel, Gabriel, Imran, Noah, and Lot. They differed as to whether there are words in it that are not individual names from other than the speech of the Arabs.

Judge Abu Bakr al-Tayyib (al-Baqillani) and others held the view that no such words are found in it and that the Quran is pure Arabic — and that whatever words in it are attributed to other languages only happened because the languages converged on them and the Arabs, Persians, Abyssinians, and others all spoke them.

Some scholars held that such words do exist in it, but that their fewness does not remove the Quran from being clear Arabic, nor the Messenger of God ﷺ from being a speaker in the language of his people.

Examples Cited by the Scholars

The scholars who acknowledged such words cited the following examples — each word having been Arabized before the revelation of the Quran:

Al-Mishkat: the window — Nasha: he got up at night (from which comes “Indeed, the rising of the night”) — Wa yutikum kiflayn: “And He will give you two parts” means double — Faraat min Qasura: the entire lion in the language of Abyssinia — Al-Ghasaq: the cold, stinking cold in the language of the Turks — Al-Qistas: the scales in the language of the Romans — Al-Sijjil: stones and clay in the language of the Persians — Al-Tur: the mountain — Al-Yam: the sea in Syriac — Al-Tanur: the face of the earth in Persian.

“The truth of the expression of these words is that they are originally foreign, but the Arabs used them and Arabized them, so they are Arabic in this way, and the Arabs had the pure language on which the Quran was revealed. In her language there was some mixing with other languages through trade and the journeys of Quraysh — the journey of Musafir ibn Abi Amr to the Levant, the journey of Umar ibn al-Khattab, the journey of Amr ibn al-As and Ammarah ibn al-Walid to the land of Abyssinia, and the journey of al-A’sha to al-Hirah and his company with its Christians, despite being an authority in the language. The Arabs attached to all of this foreign words, some of which they changed by reducing their letters, and moved to lighten the weight of the foreignness, and used them in their poetry and dialogues until they became the correct Arabic language and statements were made of them. And on this level the Quran was revealed with them. If an Arab is ignorant of them, then he is ignorant of the explicit meaning of what is in the language of another, just as Ibn Abbas did not know the meaning of Fatir, and so on.”
— continued “What al-Tabari (may God have mercy on him) went to — that the two languages agreed on a word — that is far-fetched. Rather, one of them is the root and the other is the branch in most cases, because we do not also reject the permissibility of a small, unusual agreement.”

Another scholar said: The first position is more correct, and his saying — that it is the root in the speech of others and an intruder in their speech — is not more appropriate than the opposite, because the Arabs are not free from having spoken with it or not. If it is the first, then it is from their speech, since there is no meaning to their language and speech except what was like that for them, and it is not far-fetched that others agreed with them on some of their words.

Imam Abu Ubaidah’s Argument

“If it is said: These words are not according to the Arabic language, so they are not from it — we say: And who can accept that you have confined their language to the point that you have excluded these from it? The judge has researched the origins of the Arabic language and traced these names back to them in the grammatical manner. However, if the Arabs did not speak to them or know them, it is impossible for God to speak to them in a way they do not know — then the Quran would not be clear Arabic, and the Messenger would not be speaking to his people in their language. And God knows best.”

Dr. Abd al-Rahman Badawi’s Refutation of the Orientalist Claim

Dr. Abd al-Rahman Badawi discusses the claims of the Orientalists in this regard, saying:

“In order to assume the validity of this claim, Muhammad must have known Hebrew, Syriac, and Greek, and he must have had a great library that included all the Talmudic literature, the Christian Gospels, various prayer books, decisions of church councils, as well as some works of the Greek fathers and books of various churches: Christian sects and denominations.”

He then comments: “Can this strange talk of these writers be reasonable, and it is a talk for which there is no evidence? The life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, before and after the emergence of his message, is known to everyone — and no one, ancient or modern, can confirm that the Prophet knew anything other than Arabic. So how can he benefit from these sources as they claim?”

The Semitic Language Lineage — The Final Refutation

Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac all belong to one linguistic lineage: the Semitic language family. For that reason there must be a great deal of similarity between them.

Saying that one language borrowed certain words from its sisters is a kind of arbitrariness — unless there is evidence for it. It is entirely possible that these words existed in Arabic long before the time of the Prophet ﷺ and settled in the Arabic language until they became part of it and became part of its vocabulary that was widely used among the Arabs.

It is also impossible now — due to the ambiguity of the history of the Semitic languages — to determine who borrowed these common words from the other: Arabic or Hebrew? This is sufficient to prove the insignificance of the arguments of those Orientalists who expanded on the topic of derivation from Semitic languages.

The Orientalist argument about foreign words in the Quran is not a linguistic discovery — it is a theological programme dressed in linguistic clothing. The scholars of Islam agreed that the Quran contains no foreign grammatical constructions and that it is composed in clear Arabic. What it contains of words that appear in other Semitic languages reflects the shared linguistic ancestry of Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac — not borrowing from Jewish or Christian sources. The Prophet ﷺ was known to every ancient and modern scholar as an Arabic speaker with no knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, or Greek. The Orientalists who claim he drew from Talmudic literature, Christian gospels, church councils, and Greek fathers would need to explain where and when he accessed a great library containing all of this — and they cannot.
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