نشریه رهیافت هایی در علوم قرآن و حدیث
سال چهل و هفتم شماره 1 (پیاپی 94، بهار و تابستان 1394)

The Most Beautiful Names of God (Asmā’ al-Ḥusnā) are among the most frequently used concepts in the Holy Qur’ān and the study of the application of these names has a great role in understanding and interpretation of the Qur’ān. Since the concepts employed in the Qur’ān have been mostly studied with the traditional narrative, legal, or theological approaches and since the lexical and literal approaches to the Holy Qur’ān have not had much proportionate relation to the modern linguistics and semantics, in this article a modern semantic method has been briefly presented for examining the concepts employed in the Holy Qur’ān and the noun fāṭir in the Holy Qur’ān is semantically examined thereafter. As a result of this examination, the connection of the noun fāṭir with the contrasting concepts of “monotheism/polytheism” and “guidance/misguidance” as well as its relation to the concept of “Lordship” has been unveiled and it is clarified that the noun fāṭir in the Holy Qur’ān does not only refer to creation in its general meaning; rather, it refers to the specific creation of human being, as mentioned in the Holy Qur’ān with the phrasing fiṭrat Allāh.

The relation between the variants of the frequency and the length of the word is among the laws that George Kinsley Zipf discovered, according to which, the longer is the length of a word, the less is the frequency of its application in the text. It is tried in the present research to examine this law, which has not been so far examined on the Arabic language of the Qur’ān, with a concentration on the noun words in the Makkī and Madanī sūras of Al-Aḥzāb and Al-Ghāfir. The findings indicate that the exception of Zipf’s law, according to which the words that have less than three phonemes have less frequency in the text, is true for the sūras of Al-Aḥzāb and Al-Ghāfir. Both of the sūras follow Zipf’s law in regard to the words of 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 phonemes. However, these sūras violate Zipf’s law in three instances. The first instance of the violation of this law was observed in sūras of Al-Aḥzāb and Al-Ghāfir, in which the four-phoneme words had more frequency of occurrence than the three-phoneme words and one of its reasons was the repetition of four-phoneme noun words such as ayyu, kullu, and shay’ in Sūrat Al-Aḥzāb; and rabb and yawm in Sūrat Al-Ghāfir. The second instance of violation of the law was the high frequency of five-phoneme words in comparison not only to four- and three-phoneme words, but also to the length of all the words in sūras of Al-Aḥzāb and Al-Ghāfir. Among the reasons for the high frequency of five-phoneme words can be the frequent repetition of these words (such as the glorious words of Allah, rasūl, and nabī) as well as the melodious tone of the Qur’ān. The third instance of violating the Zipf law in Sūrat Al-Ghāfir concerns the eight-phoneme words, as these words have more frequency than the seven-phoneme words. As one of the reasons for the high frequency of the eight-phoneme words can one refer to the repetition of the noun words of mu’mināt, kāfirīna, and Ṣādiqīna.

Among the traditions concerning the signs of wisdom, there is a tradition related from Imam al-Ṣādiq (A.S.) introducing the person wearing a long beard, the signet of his ring, and his nickname, as indications of his lack of wisdom. While examining the sanad and text of this tradition, the article seeks to find out the real source of this saying and the various possibilities about the source and the main utterer of this tradition and the reason for its existence in some ḥadīth sources. One of the conclusions of this article is the inconsistency of the above tradition with other related traditions and the serious equivocality in the issuance of this tradition from an Infallible Imam (A.S.). It seems this saying has entered into the books of ḥadīth under the influence of Arab culture.

Some Islamic traditions have described women as “lacking in intellect”. These traditions have been encountered with various implications and reactions and caused debates in scholarly arenas and many writings have been written concerning this topic. We see three reactions to these traditions: some denied their issuance; some maintained women‘s lack of intellect by accepting those traditions; and some accepted them and picked up the option of ta‘wīl (allegorical interpretation) It is to be reminded that these texts are reported in the most important Sunnī and Shī‘a collections of ḥadīth. For this reason, we deemed it as necessary to examine them from various perspectives and we concluded that the issuance of these traditions are undeniable and their texts are reliable; therefore we have no alternative than examining its connotation. After surveying the meanings of intellect (‘aql) in language and ḥadīth and with the help of the evidences acquired, we concluded that what is meant by ‘aql in these traditions is not the perceptive faculty; rather, it is to be rendered as blood money (dīya) and what is seriously meant by these traditions is reprimanding the predominance of women over men. Meanwhile, this research has been conducted with the library-analytical method.

The present article aims at drawing inferences from the holy verses of the Qur’ān that are useful in cognitive treatment of depression disorder. The lawful inference of these doctrines takes place on the basis of verbal contexts of speech such as emphatic words and conventional meaning of the words as well as allegorical interpretation (ta’wīl) of speech on the basis of the rule for the bipartite division and the Qur’ān through Qur’ān interpretation method, and in some instances, in proportion to traditions. The findings of this research are the lawful doctrines including “remembrance of God as the first barrier against the stream of negative thoughts”, “the prevalence and permanence of the ups and downs of life”, “feeling content by practicing the law of gratitude”, and “sadness, as requital for sadness”, that can be appropriate substitutes for depressing thoughts. The therapeutic approach in the interpretation of the Qur’ān and Qur’ān-centeredness of therapeutic doctrines is a novel memento in the fields of exegesis, clinical psychology, and consultation.

Miskawayh regards intellect as the essence and non-material substance of human soul and mentions “virtue” as the sovereignty of intellect over the faculties of the soul (nafs) and its actions, the resul of which is the freedom of intellect in dealing with theoretical contemplations and the outcome of these contemplations is “wisdom”, that is the “happiness” of the soul. Therefore, happiness relies on the theoretical aspect of intellect; and virtue, which is the outcome of the practical mode of intellect, functions as its prelude. However, in the verses and traditions, human virtue and happiness is, on one hand, rooted in intellect and, on the other, man’s will and power of choice between vices and virtue leads to purification (virtue) resulting in salvation (happiness). Thus, the semantic dominion of intellect in the lexicology of religion and the pivotal index of human virtue and happiness in the Qur’ān, have been the key questions of this research. As such, after determining “man as the opting factor” depicted as the above pivotal index, and after recognizing the meaning of intellect and admitting its originality in virtue and happiness through distinction between truth and falsehood and providence, we have concluded that, contrary to Miskawayh’s opinion, virtue does not functions as a prelude to happiness; rather, the criterion for virtue and happiness is one and the same, i.e. acquiring “God-wariness”.

With the ‘Uthmānī Muṣḥaf (copy of the Qur’ān) having been inscribed and formalized, and upon the necessitation of reciting the Qur’ān according to its orthography, the other Muṣḥafs, including the Muṣḥaf of Ubayy b. Ka‘b, gradually lost their competence. Nevertheless, the ‘Uthmānī Muṣḥaf found its own qārīs (reciters) and qarā‘as and Abū Bakr b, Mujāhid presented the qarā‘a of his own selection of seven qārīs in his Al-Sab‘a. On the other hand, when such great scholars as Ibn Khālawayh, Makī b. Abī Ṭālib, Zamakhsharī, Shaykh Ṭūsī, et al, sought to make comparison and to prefer from among the qarā‘as of the seven qārīs, they did not forget the qarā‘a of Ubayy b. Ka‘b; rather, on various occasions and by attesting to it, they confirmed an aspect of the seven qarā‘as’ aspects and regarded Ubayy’s qarā‘a as authority for some of Ibn Mujāhid’s selection of seven qārīs. Providing twenty examples of attestation to Ubayy’s qarā‘a by the experts, the present research, by way of preference from among the qarā‘a of seven qārīs, fully confirms that the qarā‘a of Ubbay has played an undeniable role in the process of recognition of the text of the Qur’ān.