But if we consider the variety and heterogeneousness of the topics on which the Qurʾān touches, uniformity of style and diction can scarcely be expected; on the contrary, it would appear to be strangely out of place. Let us not forget that in the book, as Muḥammad’s newest biographer, Ludolf Krehl (Das Leben des Muhammed, Leipzig, 1884), expresses it, “there is given a complete code of creed and morals, as well as of the law based thereupon. There are also the foundations laid for every institution of an extensive commonwealth, for instruction, for the administration of justice, for military organization, for the finances, for a most careful legislation for the poor: all built up on the belief in the one God, who holds man’s destinies in His hand.” Where so many important objects are concerned, the standard of excellence by which we have to gauge the composition of the Qurʾān as a whole must needs vary with the matter treated upon in each particular case. Sublime and chaste, where the supreme truth of God’s unity is to be proclaimed; appealing in high-pitched strains to the imagination of a poetically-gifted people, where the eternal consequences of man’s submission to God’s holy will, or of rebellion against it, are pictured; touching in its simple, almost crude, earnestness, when it seeks again and again encouragement or consolation for God’s messenger, and a solemn warning for those to whom he has been sent, in the histories of the prophets of old: the language of the Qurʾān adapts itself to the exigencies of every-day life, when this every-day life, in its private and public bearings, is to be brought in harmony with the fundamental principles of the new dispensation.
Here, therefore, its merits as a literary production should, perhaps, not be measured by some preconceived maxims of subjective and æsthetic taste, but by the effects which it produced in Muḥammad’s contemporaries and fellow-countrymen. If it spoke so powerfully and convincingly to the hearts of his hearers as to weld hitherto centrifugal and antagonistic elements into one compact and well-organised body, animated by ideas far beyond those which had until now ruled the Arabian mind, then its eloquence was perfect, simply because it created a civilized nation out of savage tribes, and shot a fresh woof into the old warp of history.
Nöldeke’s above-quoted remark, it seems to me, raises, however, a very important question. It must, of course, be admitted that the Arabic language, which is now so greatly and deservedly admired, cannot be attributed to Muḥammad individually, but originated in and was at his time the common property of the Arabic-speaking section of the human race, or, more accurately, of its Semitic branch, who were then living within the Peninsula and in some of the neighbouring countries. But we may well ask ourselves, what would in all probability have become of this language without Muḥammad and his Qurʾān? This is not at all an idle and desultory speculation. It is true the Arabic language had already produced numerous fine specimens of genuine and high-flown poetry, but such poetry was chiefly, if not exclusively, preserved in the memory of the people, for the art of writing was certainly very little known, and still less practised.
Moreover, poetry is not tantamount to literature; it may lead to it, and will always form a most essential part of it; but it will live on, and perhaps die, in solitary isolation, unless it becomes, as it were, as Brahmans say, “twice-born,” by participating in a literary development of vaster dimensions and a more general character. Divided among themselves into numerous tribes, who were engaged in a perpetual warfare against each other, the Arabs, and with them their various dialects, would more and more have drifted asunder, poetry would have followed in the wake, and the population of Arabia would have broken up into a multitude of clans, with their particular bards, whose love- and war-songs enterprising travellers of our days might now collect, like the popular songs of the Kosaks of the steppe, or the Kalmuks and similar nationalities, vegetating for centuries in a more or less primitive state of existence.
It seems, then, that it is only a work of the nature of the Qurʾān which could develop ancient Arabic into a literary language, notwithstanding the fact that it had already been admirably handled by local poets. As this book places the national life of the Arabs upon an entirely new basis, giving it at the same time a much-needed centre and a wonderful power of expansion, it became a matter of the utmost importance, nay, of urgent necessity, that the contents of the volume should be preserved with scrupulous accuracy and undisputable conformity. This again was only possible by fixing upon one dialect, which by its recognized excellence commended itself to general acceptance, and also by establishing a written text.
But not only by raising a dialect, through its generalization, to the power of a language, and by rendering the adoption of writing indispensable, has the Qurʾān initiated the development of an Arabic literature; its composition itself has contributed two factors absolutely needful to this development: it has added to the existing poetry the origins of rhetoric and prose.
Although the decidedly poetical character of the earlier Sūrahs is obvious, they differ in two important points from the hitherto acknowledged form of poetry, which is that of the Qaṣīdah. This form consists of baits, or distichs, measured by some variation of one of the fifteen (or sixteen) principal metres, and each containing two half-lines, the same rhyme running through both hemistichs of the first bait, and through every second one of the following. For instance:
1. Qifā nabki min ẕikrā ḥabībin wa-manzilī
Bi-siqti ʾl-liwā baina ʾd-dak͟hūli wa-ḥaumalī
2. Fa-tūẓiḥa fa ʾl-maqrāti lam yaʿfu rasmuhā