Abstract
This study investigates the meaning of the term mubīn and its cognates in the Qurʾān. It examines the debate over whether mubīn has the basic meaning of “clear” or “clarifying,” weighing the various arguments that have been made for the two sides. Consideration of the requirements of qurʾānic end-rhyme and the distribution of the adjectives bayyin (masc.) and bayyinah (fem.) “clear” suggest that mubīn means “clear” and not “clarifying.” The meanings of the other cognates of mubīn are examined as well. It is argued that the feminine singular mubayyinah, an anomalous form that occur three times in the reading of Ḥafṣ, might instead be rendered bayyinah or mubīnah, both attested variants meaning “clear.” It is also suggested that a possible way to resolve the anomaly of the feminine plural mubayyināt, which also occurs three times in the reading of Ḥafṣ, would be to emend it to the feminine plural bayyināt “clear,” which occurs frequently in very similar contexts.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Vincent Cornell, Marianna Klar, Joseph Lowry, Nora K. Schmid, Nicolai Sinai, and Shawkat Toorawa for their valuable comments on drafts of this study.
Bibliography
Ambros, Arne with Stephan Prochàzka. A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2004.Search in Google Scholar
Badawi, El-Said and Muhammad Abdel Haleem. Arabic-English Dictionary of Qurʾānic Usage. Leiden: Brill, 2008.10.1163/ej.9789004149489.i-1069Search in Google Scholar
Bauer, Thomas. “The Relevance of Early Arabic Poetry for Qurʾānic Studies including Observations on Kull and on Q 22:27, 26:225, and 52:31.” In The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu, 699–732. Edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai, and Michael Marx. Leiden: Brill, 2010.10.1163/ej.9789004176881.i-864.185Search in Google Scholar
Birnstiel, Daniel. “Neither Clear nor Clarifying – Yet Clearly Arabic.” In Re-engaging Comparative Semitic and Arabic Studies, 45–104. Edited by Daniel Birnstiel and Naama Pat-El. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018.10.2307/j.ctvcm4fp0.5Search in Google Scholar
Boisliveau, Anne-Sylvie. Le Coran par lui-même: Vocabulaire et argumentation du discours coranique autoréférentiel. Leiden: Brill, 2014.10.1163/9789004259706Search in Google Scholar
Chouémi, Moustafa. Le Verbe dans le Coran: racines et forms. Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1966.Search in Google Scholar
Corriente, Federico. “Some notes on the qurʾānic lisānun mubīnun and its loanwords.” In Sacred Text: Explorations in Lexicography, 31–45. Edited by Juan-Pedro Monferrer-Sala and Ángel Urbán. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009.Search in Google Scholar
Dichy, Joseph. “Aux sources interprétatives de la rhétorique arabe et de l’exégèse coranique: la non transparence du langage, de la du langage, de la racine /b-y-n/ dans le Coran aux conceptions d’al-Jâḥiẓ et d’Ibn Qutayba.” In Literary and Philosophical Rhetoric in the Greek, Roman, Syriac, and Arabic Worlds, 245–77. Edited by Frédérique Woerther. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2009.Search in Google Scholar
Fārisī, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd al-Ghaffār al-. al-Ḥujjah li-l-qurrāʾ al-sabʿah, 6 vols., ed. Badr al-Dīn Qahwajī and Bashīr Juwayjātī. Beirut: Dār al-Maʾmūn li-l-Turāth, 1984.Search in Google Scholar
Farrāj, ʿAbd al-Sattār Aḥmad and Maḥmūd Muḥammad Shākir, eds. Kitāb sharḥ ashʿār al-Hudhaliyyīn: Ṣanʿat Abī Saʿīd al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥusayn al-Sukkarī, 3 vols. Cairo: Maktabat Dār al-ʿUrūbah, 1963–65.Search in Google Scholar
Fīrūzābādī, Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-. Al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ, 4 vols. Cairo: al-Hayʾah al-Miṣriyyah al-ʿĀmmah li-l-Kitāb, 1980.Search in Google Scholar
Freytag, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Lexicon Arabico-Latinum. Halle: C.A. Schwetschke, 1837.Search in Google Scholar
Gilliot, Claude. “Reconsidering the Authorship of the Qurʾān: Is the Qurʾān Partly the Fruit of a Progressive and Collective Work?” In The Qurʾān in Historical Context, 88–108. Edited by Gabriel Said Reynolds. London: Routledge, 2008.Search in Google Scholar
Gimaret, Daniel. Les noms divins en Islam: Exégèse lexicographique et théologique. Paris: Éditions Cerf, 1988.Search in Google Scholar
Golius, Jacob. Lexicon Arabico-Latinum. Leiden: Johannes Janssonius, 1653.Search in Google Scholar
Hoyland, Robert. “ʿArabī and aʿjamī in the Qurʾān: The Language of Revelation in Muḥammad’s Ḥijāz.” In Scripts and Scripture: Writing and Religion in Arabia circa 500–700 CE, 105–15. Edited by Fred M. Donner and Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2022.Search in Google Scholar
Ibn Hishām al-Anṣārī. Mughnī al-labīb ʿan kutub al-aʿārīb, 2 vols. Edited by Māzin al-Mubārak and Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḥamd Allāh. Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1964.Search in Google Scholar
Ibn Manẓūr. Lisān al-ʿarab, 15 vols. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1955–56.Search in Google Scholar
Ibn ʿUṣfūr al-Ishbīlī, al-Mumtiʿ fī al-taṣrīf, 2 vols. Edited by Fakhr al-Dīn Qabāwah. Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-Jadīdah, 1983.Search in Google Scholar
Kazimirski de Biberstein, Albert. Dictionnaire arabe-français, 2 vols. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1860.Search in Google Scholar
Khaṭīb, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Muḥammad al-. Muʿjam al-qirāʾāt, 11 vols. Cairo: Dār Saʿd al-Dīn, 2002.Search in Google Scholar
Kropp, Manfred. “Lisān ʿarabiyy mubīn – ‘klares Arabisch’ oder: ‘offenbar Arabisch’ gar ‘geoffenbartes Arabisch’?” In Books and Written Culture of the Islamic World: Studies Presented to Claude Gilliot on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, 271–87. Edited Andrew Rippin and Roberto Tottoli. Leiden: Brill, 2015.Search in Google Scholar
Lane, Edward William. An Arabic-English Lexicon. London: Williams & Norgate, 1863.Search in Google Scholar
Larcher, Pierre. Sur le Coran: Nouvelles approches linguistiques. Limoges: Éditions Lambert-Lucas, 2020.Search in Google Scholar
Leemhuis, Fred. The D and H Stems in Koranic Arabic: A Comparative Study of the Function and Meaning of the faʿʿala and ‘afʿala Forms in Koranic Usage. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977.10.1163/9789004659681Search in Google Scholar
Madigan, Daniel A. The Qurʾân’s Self-Image: Writing and Authority in Islam’s Scripture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.10.1515/9780691188454Search in Google Scholar
al-Maḥallī, Jalāl al-Dīn and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī. Tafsīr al-Jalālayn. Edited by Muḥammad Muḥammad Tāmir. Al-Manṣūrah: Maktabat al-Īmān, 2016.Search in Google Scholar
Mir, Mustansir. “Language.” In The Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, 88–106. Edited by Andrew Rippin. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.10.1111/b.9781405117524.2006.00008.xSearch in Google Scholar
Müller, Friedrun R. Untersuchungen zur Reimprosa im Koran. Bonn: Selbstverlag des Orientalischen Seminars der Universitat, 1969.Search in Google Scholar
Penrice, John. A Dictionary and Glossary of the Koran. London: Henry S. King and Co., 1873.Search in Google Scholar
al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad. Al-Mufradāt fī gharīb al-Qurʾān. Edited by Muḥammad Sayyid Kīlānī. Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifah, 1997.Search in Google Scholar
Reynolds, Gabriel Said. “A Reflection on Two Qurʾānic Words (Iblīs and Jūdī), with Attention to the Theories of A. Mingana,” JAOS 124 (2004): 675–89.10.2307/4132112Search in Google Scholar
Stewart, Devin J. “Poetic License in the Qurʾān: Ibn al-Ṣāʾigh al-Ḥanafī’s Iḥkām al-Rāy fi Aḥkām al-Āy,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 11.1 (2009): 1–54.10.3366/E1465359109000576Search in Google Scholar
–. “Divine Epithets and the Dibacchius: Clausulae and Qur’anic Rhythm,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies 15.2 (2013): 22–64.10.3366/jqs.2013.0095Search in Google Scholar
–. “Poetic License and the Qur’anic Names of Hell: The Treatment of Cognate Substitution in al-Raghib al-Isfahani’s Qur’anic Lexicon.” In The Meaning of the Word, 195–253. Edited by Stephen Burge. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015.Search in Google Scholar
Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Din al-. Al-Ḥujaj al-mubīnah fī al-tafḍīl bayna Makkah wa-l-Madīnah. Edited by ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Darwīsh Riyadh: Dār al-Yamāmah, 1985.Search in Google Scholar
ʿUmar, Aḥmad Mukhtār and ʿAbd al-ʿĀl Sālim Makram. Muʿjam al-qirāʾāt al-qurʾāniyyah, 8 vols. Kuwait: Maṭbūʿāt Jāmiʿat al-Kuwayt, 1988.Search in Google Scholar
Wright, William. A Grammar of the Arabic Language, 3rd ed., 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.Search in Google Scholar
Zaborski, Andrzej. “Non-Causative Verbs of the Causative ʾaqtala Class in Arabic and *yuqtilu in Proto-Semitic.” In Studies in Semitic and General Linguists in Honor of Gideon Goldenberg, 31–43. Edited by Tali Bar and Eran Cohen. Münster: Ugarit–Verlag, 2007.Search in Google Scholar
Zamakhsharī, Abū l-Qāsim Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar al-. Al-Kashshāf ʿan ḥaqāʾiq al-tanzīl, 4 vols. Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1966.Search in Google Scholar
Zwettler, Michael. The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1978.Search in Google Scholar
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Obituary: Mahmoud Ayoub (1935–2021)
- The Qurʾān and the Putative pre-Islamic Practice of Female Infanticide
- Worship (dīn), Monotheism (islām), and the Qurʾān’s Cultic Decalogue
- The Shifting Ontology of the Qurʾān in Ḥanafism: Debates on Reciting the Qurʾān in Persian
- Are these Nothing but Sorcerers? – A linguistic analysis of Q Ṭā-Hā 20:63 using intra-Qurʾānic parallels
- Mubīn and Its Cognates in the Qurʾān
- The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān: A Reassessment
- Review of Qur’anic Research
- Marijn van Putten. Quranic Arabic: From its Hijazi Origins to its Classical Reading Traditions. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xiii + 351. Hardcover USD $149.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-50625-1
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Obituary: Mahmoud Ayoub (1935–2021)
- The Qurʾān and the Putative pre-Islamic Practice of Female Infanticide
- Worship (dīn), Monotheism (islām), and the Qurʾān’s Cultic Decalogue
- The Shifting Ontology of the Qurʾān in Ḥanafism: Debates on Reciting the Qurʾān in Persian
- Are these Nothing but Sorcerers? – A linguistic analysis of Q Ṭā-Hā 20:63 using intra-Qurʾānic parallels
- Mubīn and Its Cognates in the Qurʾān
- The Meaning of ibtahala in the Qurʾān: A Reassessment
- Review of Qur’anic Research
- Marijn van Putten. Quranic Arabic: From its Hijazi Origins to its Classical Reading Traditions. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xiii + 351. Hardcover USD $149.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-50625-1