An Analysis of the Textual Context ofAyahs of Blowing the Trumpet Using Lexical Semantics, Pragmatics of Conjunctions and Aesthetics

Most exegetes implicitly or explicitly believe in two occurrences of the Blowing the Trumpet (indicating the death and then the coming to life of all beings) at the end of the world. There is another group of exegetes, however, who maintain that the Qur’anic ayahs speak of three blows and there are also few exegetes who believe in the occurrence of four blows. There is thus controversy about the order of the events occurring on the threshold of Qiyama (resurrection). The present descriptive-analytical study aims to analyze the textual context of the ayahs of Blowing the Trumpet and demonstrate a clear picture of the number of blows and their consequent events so that it would eventually answer the question that which viewpoint of the exegetes conforms to the textual analysis of the related ayahs. Through analyzing the lexical semantics of the words faza’ and sa’qah, this study carried out an extensive exploration of 212 commentaries and analyses of the exegetes on the number of the blows as well as the precedence and posteriority of mashahed al-sa'ah. In addition, the analysis of the literary functions of some of the conjunctions used in these ayahs such as ”Fa” and "Thomma” and considering the elements of register, lexical and semantic attached and detached contextual clues, and an aesthetic analysis based on lexical cohesion showed that the Holy Qur’an mentions the occurrence of three blows of faza’ (terror), sa’qah (swoon) and ihya' (revivification) on the threshold of Qiyama, and the events called mashahed al-sa'ah shall occur after the first blow.