An Analysis of the Function of Phonetic Structures of Surah Muhammad in Conveying Textual Meaning

Ayah 112 of Surah An-Nahl talks about the people of a city who were bestowed on the favors of security, tranquility and economic welfare; but they turned ungrateful to those divine favors. Consequently, Allah chastised them with tasting hunger and fear. The concept of Allah’s recompense to those people is mentioned in the form of a metaphorical proposition: Allamh made them taste the garment of hunger and fear. This metaphor has attracted the attention of the scholars of Qurʾānic studies from the early beginning and has always been considered one of the linguistic beauties of the Qurʾān. Recently some scholars have counted this metaphor among a series of evidence proving the idea of assuming the Qurʾān not as divine revelation, but as the dreams of Prophet Mohammad. To evaluate this single claim, the present article analyses the content and conceptual order of the ayah mentioned. The article also analyses the main metaphor of the ayah i.e. likening the hunger and fear to garment, and the secondary metaphor i.e. making people tasting the garment of hunger and fear. The article also studies the metaphor from an intertextual point of view and gives some examples from Arabic poems of the pre-Islamic era. Given all the above-mentioned dimensions, the article eventually concludes that, according to the principles and customary usage of old and modern Arabic, the metaphor used in the ayah is absolutely normal, popular, and understandable, invalidating the idea of considering the Holy Qurʾān as dreams.