The Significance of This Research

An early look at what will be the concluding chapter of the Heavenly Order Book I'm putting together.

﷽

While reading through “A Place Between Two Places,”¹ I found this paragraph to be a great summary of what Heavenly Order is attempting to do:

Also, it must be acknowledged that the search for literary parallels within a text is not a wholly ‘scientific’ process … Parallels of many kinds (linguistic, thematic, aural) naturally occur in all lengthy texts. In short, any particular observation made about the Qurʾān’s structure and use of parallelisms could be due to pure chance. We must admit that any number of the repetitions observed below may be merely coincidence, or may be part of other structures that are also active in al-Kahf (and the Qurʾān as a whole). And yet, the search for ring compositions only posits that there is a tendency behind a system’s parallels. I would argue that when these parallels are considered collectively, the sūra’s dozens of parallels and their specific placements within the text shows a pattern that exceeds chance.

In other words, I could be fulfilling a confirmation bias and seeing patterns because I want to see them, or because I already believe they are there to be discovered, but the fact they are being found throughout the Quran, over and over again, points to what appears to be a deliberate nature to these structures.

One may have also noticed that I presented more than one possible structure for multiple suwar, which the skeptic might see as attempts at “throwing all I can at the wall to see what sticks.” But I would like to propose another theory.

When one searches the meaning of the Quran in tafsīr, it is common to come across multiple definitions and explanations of a single word. What scholars will tell you is that often these differences of opinion are not contradictory, but rather, complementary. Each may in fact be correct and further lends to the depth of the Quran’s meanings. This is probably best seen in the translation of the word “Aṣ-Ṣamad,” in our analysis of Sūrah al-Ikhlāṣ as both “needed by all, needing none,” and “the Eternal.” While completely different, they are both valid.

Similarly, maybe Quranic structuring is the same way. Is it possible that the depth of Allah’s words allows for there to be more than one way to organize them? And that each new structuring gives us a different perspective on the text? This is theory I ascribe to.

It is not that one structuring is “wrong,” rather, there are multiple, overlapping structures that all demonstrate the depth and complexity of Allah’s word. As mentioned in the intro, Allah ﷻ tells us in Sūrah al-Kahf (The Cave), “Say, ‘If the sea were ink for [writing] the words of my Lord, the sea would be exhausted before the words of my Lord were exhausted, even if We brought the like of it as a supplement.’“²

Hopefully we now have a better appreciation for the beauty, organization, coherence, and genius of Allah’s words. Nothing in His Book is there by random. Each word, each āyah, and each passage is placed in a predetermined place that best suits the immediate and surrounding context.

What we have also seen is that the parallels and structure of a sūrah may act as a tool to help us better understand the Quran. The subtle meanings gleaned from the above analysis may lend itself to an additional tool for “Tafsīr of the Quran by the Quran,” which qualified scholars may utilize in future exegetical works.

Someone once asked me, “Can we claim that the ring composition is a miracle that proves that the Quran is the book of Allah? Or can we not because it was already available in poems and other manuscripts before Islam?” This is a great question, but one that needs reframing. I could write a ring composition in this paragraph, but no one would think it is miraculous, so it is not the structure alone that amazes. Also, there are some suwar which seem to demonstrate a parallel structure, not a ring structure, so it not true of the entire Quran anyways.³

That said, I do not believe the organization of the Quran is a miracle that proves it can only be from Allah ﷻ-in other words, this is not what I base my faith on-but when one considers how the Quran was revealed, it certainly seems implausible that this was all compiled by a human. The Quran is originally an oral tradition, spoken by the Messenger ﷺ, without undergoing revisions, out of order, responding to real-time events, over 23 years, by an unlettered man, addressing issues as far ranging as politics, finances, spirituality, history, morals, law and ritual worship, and despite all of that, after it was finally arranged at the end of the 23-year period, we find an incredible structure and organization to it. We find ring structures, mirror structures, parallel structures, and sometimes even structures within other structures, and all without compromising on the perfection of the message itself.

As Mustansir Mir has detailed elsewhere,⁴ the study of the Quran’s organization is a burgeoning field which has only recently had scholarship focused on its study. I pray that Muslims struggling with understanding the Quran’s unique structuring will take inspiration from this book and begin discovering examples of organization in the Quran on their own.⁵ At the very least, I pray that if they come across a sūrah that they cannot understand the coherence of, they will know that a structure does exist, but they may need to reflect more to find it and understand it.

This work is far from a comprehensive view of the Quran’s structure. There is much more documented that was either left out or, more likely, not discovered yet. This book documents some aspect of organization and coherence for half (57 out of 114) of the suwar of the Quran. God willing, I will publish a 2^nd edition sometime in the future which records some type of structuring for the remaining 57 suwar.

It is also very possible that there are organizing tools that I did not consider or know about that Allah ﷻ utilizes to present His speech to us. Limiting the observations to ring and parallel structures is unnecessarily limiting to the Quran. The Quran is a miracle that never ends, so our research into it is without end either. May Allah ﷻ accept this as a small contribution to better appreciating His words.

Additional Resources

If the topic of the Quran’s organization and structure interests you beyond what you may find in this book, please check out:

· HeavenlyOrder.substack.com by Munir Eltal

· Structure and Qur'anic Interpretation by Raymond Farrin

· A Tentative Guide to the Themes of the Surahs of the Qur’an by H.R.H. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad

· Divine Speech: Exploring Quran as Literature by Nouman Ali Khan and Sharif Randhawa

· at-Tanāsubu Bayn as-Suwar fi al-Muftataḥi wa al-Khawātīm by Dr Fāḍil Ṣaliḥ as-Samarrāī'

· Dalāil an-Niẓām by Hamīduddīn al-Farāhī

· The many academic papers written by Mustansir Mir

· Tadabbur al-Qur’ān by Shaykh Amīn Aḥsan Iṣlāḥi

And Allah ﷻ knows best.

1. Archer, George. A Place Between Two Places: The Qur’ān’s Intermediate State and the Early History of the Barzakh. 2015. Georgetown University, PhD dissertation. Pg. 97

2. 18:109 - قُل لَّوْ كَانَ الْبَحْرُ مِدَادًا لِّكَلِمَاتِ رَبِّي لَنَفِدَ الْبَحْرُ قَبْلَ أَن تَنفَدَ كَلِمَاتُ رَبِّي وَلَوْ جِئْنَا بِمِثْلِهِ مَدَدًا

3. Of course, this could be because I have not discovered the ring structure yet.

4. See Coherence in the Qurʿān – A Study of Iṣlāḥi's Concept of Naẓm in Tadabbur-l Qurʿān

5. Thank you to those who have been generous enough to share their discoveries with me! If I have not already published them on the blog or this book, I will be publishing them soon!