Qur'an: Difference between revisions

• <i>“Agonistically toned”</i>: Oral cultures generally throw down dares, puzzles, and provocations for its listeners to keep them engaged. “Proverbs and riddles are not used simply to store knowledge but to engage others in verbal and intellectual combat: utterance of one proverb or riddle challenges hearers to top it with a more apposite or a contradictory one.” On a similar note excessively violent material with gory detail, as well as rich declarations of praise, are common. The audience is not only to be interested; they must react. We have seen already the ‘challenge verse’ of Yūnus 10:38. More examples would include the very colorful explanations of Paradise and frightening imagery of damnation.}}

=== Poetry and prose ===

Many academics (and traditional Islamic scholars) have noted the comparison of the style with a pre-Islamic form of what one would consider a type of poetry or "rhymed prose" known as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saj%27 Saj'].<ref>Stewart, Devin J. “Sajʿ in the ‘Qurʾān’: Prosody and Structure.” ''Journal of Arabic Literature'', vol. 21, no. 2, 1990, pp. 101–39. ''JSTOR'', <nowiki>http://www.jstor.org/stable/4183221</nowiki>. Accessed 2 Feb. 2025.</ref> It was heavily associated with Soothsayers (sg. kāhin pl. kuhhān).<ref>''Ibid. pp. 103''  & Stewart, Devin (2006). "Soothsayer" Entry. ''[https://archive.org/details/EncyclopaediaOfTheQuranVol5/page/n81/mode/2up Encyclopedia Of The Quran Vol 5.] Brill. pp. 78–80.'' </ref> Neuwirth (2019) notes, although the Qur’an presents only a polemical stance toward the soothsayers, it nonetheless attests a clearly perceived formal relationship to the mantic forms of discourse of the early Arab seers, who's oracular pronouncements were marked by metrically undefined rhyming prose, which bore similarities to the early Meccan suras—particularly in their use of introductory oath clusters, a structure not found elsewhere.<ref>Neuwirth, Angelika. The Qur'an and Late Antiquity: A Shared Heritage (Oxford Studies in Late Antiquity) (p. 425). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition. </ref>

Hoyland (2001) writes about pre-Islamic Arabia.