نشریه رهیافت هایی در علوم قرآن و حدیث
سال چهل و نهم شماره 2 (پیاپی 99، پاییز و زمستان 1396)

According to some traditions of the Ahl al-Bayt (A.S.) the Revelation of the blessed Sūrat al-Inshirāḥ and in particular the verse before the last, (So when you are done, appoint,) refers to the event of Ghadir Khumm and the appointment of Imam Ali (A.S.) to Imamate of the Muslim Community. The impression of the verse is as follows: “So when you are done with your Prophethood, appoint Ali as Imam.” Proving this impression faces three serious challenges: A. lack of narrational origin; B. the sūra being Meccan; C. not being coordinated with the reading (qarā‘a). Examining these three challenges shows that presenting such interpretation of the verse and the sūra is not only not improbable but seems very acceptable and receives much attention as well; since A. from among seventeen traditions available in the Sunni and Shī‘a sources, at least in two of the traditions with sound chain of transmission it is interpreted as above; B. the blessed Sūrat al-Inshirāḥ is Medinan as evidenced by the context of its verses and the explicit and implied confirmation of a number of the Sunni and Shī‘a interpreters; C. in its popular qarā‘a, the verse is more consistent with meaning of the imperative naṣb (appoint), although this interpretation is also harmonious with the meaning of getting tired in the popular interpretation, as well.

The present article is intended to provide a comparative study on the incidents prior to the Noah’s Deluge and the Jewish texts on the one hand and the Holy Qur’an and Islamic religious text on the other. In the beginning of the Noah’s story in the Torah, mention is made of the sons of God, their infatuation with the girls of humankind and the birth of robust men out of the marriage of these two groups. What is the view of the Qur’an, traditions, and Islamic interpretations about this? What difference is there between the Qur’an’s moral message and that of the Torah in this respect? The present article addresses this subject and concludes that the main characters in the Qur’an and Islamic texts are human beings, their main sin has been idolatry, and Noah used to call them to monotheism. But the main characters in the Torah and the Jewish Text had been celestial beings and their children, their main sin has not been idolatry, and Noah has not called them to monotheism. Therefore, the Qur’an has used this story to emphasize on the necessity of abiding by monotheism, but Torah does not contain such message.

Fasting of ‘Āshūrā is among the common Sunnis rituals; however, the traditions about its origin and rulings seem to be inconsistent. Attempting to reconcile among their traditions in this respect, the Sunni jurists have finally passed a decree to the desirability (istiḥbāb) of this ritual. Furthermore, while the first five Imams have a positive approach to the ritual, the Shī‘as have on the basis of the traditions of the latter Imams, given fatwa to its aversion or unlawfulness and have introduced it as fabricated by the Umayyad for celebrating a feast during the martyrdom days of Imam Ḥusayn (A.S.). The contemporary researcher, Sulayman Bāshīr, while denying the relation of this ritual to the martyrdom, has considered as effective the role of the Umayyads in the formation of this ritual. The present study is a critical review of the above-mentioned opinions on the basis of belief in the possibility of reconciliation between these traditions and acceptance of a new theory: since the second caliph ‘Umar wanted, on Imam Ali’s (A.S.) order, to base the beginning of Islamic calendar upon the Prophet’s migration, this ritual was promoted to represent the importance of the Prophet’s migration in a symbolic matrix and in the latter generations the students of these two were the main figures who undertook to promote it; although with the change of the first month of the year from Rabi’ al-Awwal to Muharam, the Prophet’s migration on ‘Āshūrā was forgotten and the martyrdom of Imam Ḥusayn (A.S.) on ‘Āshūrā added to the ambiguities of the origins of this day and the causes for promotion of it by the early Shī‘a Imams (A.S.).

The Holy Qur’an is God’s everlasting miracle and the most beautiful of speeches. Selection and arrangement of the words, coordination of meanings, and consistency of order are among the components of these beauties, which are the main pillars of miracle as well. The study of this aesthetic aspect of the Qur’an is undertaken by the science of interrelation (tanāsub), which is one of the Qur’anic sciences. This science studies the artistic and rhetoric association of the arrangement of the words and order of the verses in the Qur’an and proves the literal and semantic interrelation in it. In this research, the author seeks to answer the question as to on what lingual and rhetoric mechanism has the semantic interrelation and thematic unity of the verses of Sūrat Āl-i Imrān formed. In this respect, the verses of Sūrat Āl-i Imrān have been examined and researched from the perspective of the science of interrelation and it has been clarified by providing some evidences that although these verses have been revealed with different temporal distances and on various occasions, they have been juxtaposed and interrelated according to rhetoric and lingual mechanism and aesthetic manifestations of speech such as epitomes and details, contradiction and contrast, identification, etc.

Besides employing the imperative mode, God has used a collection of declarative structures in the Qur’an to express His intention. The experts of principles of jurisprudence have not seriously talked about these structures and have more than anything paid attention to the meaning and designation of the imperative; but the experts of jurisprudence have in a more widespread and of course scattered way alluded to them and have talked about the designation of these structures to obligatoriness and preference (istiḥbāb) or emphasis on the obligatory ordinance obtained from other structures. Many of the verses of the Qur’an contain demanding structures based on phrases of wa‘ẓ (preach), farḍ (obligate), katb (decree), ḥaqq (prove), and waṣyy (entrust). Also, declaration of the occurrence of actions; declaration of actions pertaining to people’s undertaking; demanding actions in inquiry, condition, optative, and instigation moods; threat from God; praising the action or its actor; condemning the abandonment of an action are among other structures of intentionality of an action. In order to develop jurisprudential inference from the Qur’an, this writing has described and analyzed the structures suggesting obligatoriness and preference in the verses of ordinances based on the practical approach of the Imāmī jurists and has made the conclusion that the main objective has been instigating and encouraging the religiously accountable (mukallaf) to take action.

The quality of the revelation of the Sūras can be studied from various aspects, including whether or not some verses have made intervals between the revelations of the verses of each Sūra. Some believe that the verses of the Sūras have been revealed in a dispersed way and without a specific order and later on have been organized with the guidance of the Prophet (S.A.W.) or personal judgment of his companions (ṣaḥāba). However, another group, with an impression from the Qur’an and traditions, assert that the revelation has principally been based on the “continuous revelation of the Sūras”; that is, the revelation of every Sūra has enjoyed a natural order; it has started with bismi Allāh and the revelation of the verses has successively continued (either gradually or instantaneously) until a new bismi Allāh was revealed, specifying the beginning of a new verse and ending of the previous one. All the people of the time of Revelation would find out what the limit of the Sūras had been from the beginning to the end on the basis of the continuous revelation of each Sūra.

One of the applied methods in the Qur’an for eloquence is abstaining from the literature and style of colloquial speech. Non-colloquiality of speech is one of the methods that sometimes the literati use to make their speech fascinating and call it defamiliarization; a phenomenon whose understanding has to be achievable for the listener. One of the methods of this literary approach is archaism. Archaism means applying words and phrases in colloquial and formal language that have become obsolete or using the vocabulary of a country in another country or reviving the words that are not available to the general public and give identity to the language. Archaism is one of the defamiliarization techniques in the Russia’s formalist school of literary criticism for attracting the listener’s mind.
Our attempt in this research based on this approach is that with the descriptive-analytical method within the framework of the above-mentioned school we would search a number of archaic words in the thirtieth part of the Qur’an, find the benefits of the use and frequency of these words in other parts of the Qur’an, and study its outcomes.
The resultants of this research indicate that firstly, this mechanism is made use of in the Holy Qur’an; secondly, the archaic words used in this part of the Qur’an have been very insignificantly displayed in other parts of it; and thirdly, since most of the sūras of this part have been associated with the early years of the Messenger of God’s Mission (the ambience of denial of the Truth by the polytheists), we find out that God has used the art and method of distinguishing His words for making them attractive for guidance of mankind.