QJOURNAL OF LITERARY QURANIC RESEARCHES
Year:2017 | Volume:5 | Issue:3|Papers Count:7

Every language has principles for ordering words in sentences. However, observing these principles is not always mandatory, but they are sometimes mandatory, sometimes abstained, and in cases permissible. The permissibility ofprecedence and delay depends on the text's context where authors depending on their mastery attempt at employing them. We can observe this mastery's artistic apex in the Qur' an. Although in Qur' anic ayahs similar words have been repeated several times, their various orders and arrangements in each context has led to their semantic distinctions.The present article, using a descriptive-analytic method, made an attempt to investigate this phenomenon from an aesthetic perspective. The study indicates that the beauty of this art can be appreciated in the light of a theory of context and vocabulary order. Consequently, it is difficult to translate literary texts, especially the Qur' an that enjoys a superhuman order. Although in the two translations analyzed most of the cases of precedence and delay have been ignored by translators, it is possible to find appropriate equivalents in the target language in order to offer translations for some instances of precedence and delay.

Context is one of the categories of rational reasoning and the best indication to meticulously discover ayahs' meaning for the commentators, linguists, and rhetoricians. The main concern of the present study, carried out using deduction and through selecting a number of Qur' anic ayahs is explicating, assessing and describing the manner of the use of context in the book entitledAt-Ta' bir Al Qur' āni authored by the Iraqi scholar Fadhel Saleh al-Samarrai. While rejecting repetition, and aiming at depicting literary manifestations of the Qur' anic miracle, he has explained the mystery ofmutashābih ayahs and has proved how each word is so fixed in its place that cannot be replaced by a similar word because it is mingled with the words' spirit and with discourse, i.e. context. One of the important yardsticks for his explanation is the connection of words and syntax with meaning in rhetorics. Drawing on preceding scholars' opinions and books such as Abū Ḥayyān al-Gharnāṭī' sMilāk al-ta’wīl and comparing their views with intratextual and intertextual context, he has found novel semantic subtleties that can be considered context-based semantic expansion.

Any text plays a significant role in the reproduction of its specific ideology provided that it can gain access to those discourses that make social actors hegemonic. Van Leeuwen’s (2008) discourse-oriented theory is one of the approaches to discourse analysis that aims at unraveling the hidden layers of language in written and oral texts by drawing on sociosemantic factors and with a focus on the importance of social actors. This approach to discourse analysis has the capacity to find a special position is Qur' anic studies since discoursal structures of the Qur' an and their mysterious features indicate that the hidden ideology behind all of them is more or less the same. Employing an analytical-descriptive method, and drawing on Van Leeuwen’s (2008) discourse-oriented model, the present study aimed at examining the discourse of Surah al-Qasas. This Surah was selected because it involves various social actors and speech acts due to concisely narrating the life history of Prophet Musa (UHBP). The results of the study indicate that discoursal elements based on candidness in comparison to those of secrecy were more frequent (with the frequency rate of 916 and 245, respectively). This finding suggests that using stylish creativity and innovation, this Surah has attempted to familiarize the audience with persons, groups, places, and times in which the social actors have active roles. Besides, role-designation method (with the frequency rate of 475), designation of allusion type (with the frequency rate of 353), and designation of nature (with the frequency rate of 88) has the highest representation among social actors’ types of statements and remarks.

The creation of fictional characters and their development in the form of stories is called characterization. One of the stories that both the Holy Qur'an and the Old Testament have paid special attention to is the story of Yusuf (UHBP). The Holy Qur'an and the Old Testament each have characterized Yusuf in their own ways and in pursuit of their goals. The Holy Qur'an uses characters for the presentation of events and, consequently, for the realization of the story's religious goal, i.e., the guidance of humans. In contrast, the Old Testament uses stories and events for the presentation of its intended characters, which is why it has turned into a completely historical book for the identification of the Jews. The Holy Qur' an uses historical events as a means to achieve a particular purpose, whereas in the Old Testament historiography was considered as a goal in and of itself. The Qur'anic story of Yusuf has a main character who at the end surpasses being merely the main character and becomes an idealistic character, whereas the Old Testament has several main characters. The present study used a variety of data collection methods, including library research, database citation, and document analysis. Data analysis used a descriptive-analytical procedure.

Narratology is a new approach, derived from linguistics, for analyzing the techniques and the structures of narrations, and through it, it seeks to find the narrative's grammar. Methods and views of narratology can provide us with better and more accurate analyses of Qur' anic stories and illuminate new manifestations of the beauty and the miracle of the Qur' an. The Holy Surah Nūh is entirely devoted to Noah's (UHBP) story, and it is unique among all Qur' anic surahs in this respect. The main purpose of the present analytical-descriptive study was using ideas proposed by two French narratologists, i.e. Roland Barthes and Gerard Genette, to narratologically analyze the aforementioned surah. The findings of this study show that the combination of these two thinkers' views on two spheres of narratological functions and narratological discourse yields an appropriate model for the analysis of Qur' anic stories. This model opens one's path to achieving learnings on the one hand and reveals some structural beauties concealed in the Qur' anic stories on the other hand.

The root "nzl" is one of the most frequent roots used in various lexical forms close to four hundred times in the Qur' an. Originally meant ' to descend from top to down', this root has found semantic expansion in the Qur' an when used in other senses, such as creating, forgiveness, learning, entering, trial and promise. Whenever the word nuzul has been used to refer torain, its context is different from the sending down of the Qur'an: in the former, this word is solely used with the word sama (the sky) while in the latter, when indicating the sending down ofwahy, it is always collocating words and phrases such asmin indina, rouholamin, heart of the Prophet and along with multiple attributes of God. In the Holy Qur'an, this word has collocated on the syntagmatic axis with words and phrases such as merciful and compassionate, the Lord of the Worlds, " Mighty, the Wise ", "the Wise, the Praised One", and Haqq and that it shows the greatness and holiness of the Qur'an and in fact it introduces God as the real actor and the doer of the revelation. Further, at paradigmatic axis, it has been substituted by words such aswahy, ilqa, qira' at, tilawat, aati, Ja’a, and Jaala each of which tell the sending down of the Qur'an in some ways and portray Prophet's (SA) relationship with the Angel of Revelation. In sum, this descriptive-analytical study analyzed the word nuzul taking a semantic approach on two syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes and expressed its semantic components. learnings on the one hand and reveals some structural beauties concealed in the Qur'anic stories on the other hand.

This research was an attempt to study the extent to which music and form of ayahs and surahs of the Qur'an are regarded in Qur' anic translations and how such crucial elements are translatable. Each text has different aspects and in terms of form and music, religious texts also convey special messages, which regarding their particular impact on the audience, are highly important. These significant textual features can necessarily be reflected in translation.The current study tried to analyze these textual features and standards in German translations of the Holy Qur'an by Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866) and to answer this very question that to what extent this Qur' anic translation has been successful in transferring the form and the tone of the original text. By presenting different examples from short musical Surahs, in comparison with their Persian translations, important literal and linguistic subtleties of religious texts were analyzed and the translation quality, compared with the original Qur' anic text, was evaluated.