A Linguistic Study on the Concept of "Ibil" in the Quran based on the Coherence of the Text

Examining the relevance and coherence of the verses is critical in understanding the text of the Holy Quran; cohesion is one of the crucial features of a text in the science of textology, and regarding the Holy Quran's text, it has a significant impact on understanding God's intention. Belief in the coherence or incoherence of the Quran text makes this book to be considered an ordinary and non-revealed text or a revealed one. The main question of this paper is whether the word "Ibil"(camel) has been meant correctly in the interpretation sources and translations. It is based on the view that it is impossible to study the Quran's words without considering the principles of the text coherence. So, by using a critical-analytical method and text's coherence approach, this article analyzed verses 17- 20 of surah "al-Ghāshīyah". The results show no semantic relevance between the term "Ibil" and other words, namely the sky, the mountain, and the earth. Therefore, it seems that this word should have another meaning rather than "camel". The cohesion of the verses' meanings and semantic analysis of the word suggest "cloud" as its intended sense; this meaning is relevant to the Arabs discourse. Moreover, concerning the text coherence in the speech chain based on the syntagmatic relations of the words, it has more coherence.