Arabic language

This paper seeks to explains the way in which the Qur’ān historically established its identity through its use of asmā’ al-Qur’ān ( al-qur’ān, al-kitāb, al-furqān, and al-dhikr ). In doing so, it combines the analysis of the literary feature and the historical chronology of every single use of asmā’ al-qur’ān terminologies during its formative period. This analysis requires the use of al-tartīb al-nuzūl approach—that of al-Jābiri—integrated with discourse analysis to understand the process of identity building of the Qur’an. According to this study, the Qur’ān language was the tool through which the Qur’ān distributed its power, both explicitly and implicitly. The implicit mechanism manifesting itself as the Qur’ān’s positional play between the traditional shi‘r and earlier scripture in order to influence the Quraish’s psychological state. The explicit mechanism is that it clearly declares itself to be the Arabic scripture ( Qur’ānan arabiyya ). Asmā’ al-Qur’ān plays an important role in both strategies. There would be no better way to gain influence for the Arab community, which valued language and had a strong emotional attachment to it. Even though few believed in it, the identity of the Qur’an had been successfully established through both strategies in its first seven years.

Research findings have shown that acquiring proficiency in reading is highly dependent on morphology. Also, it has been proved that morphology is a stronger determiner and predictor for reading in Semitic languages such as Arabic. Due to the fact that Qur’anic reading is an important skill for the Muslim community and the gap in the literature on Qur’anic reading, the current research is an attempt to study the effect of morphological awareness on Qur’anic reading fluency and accuracy. To this aim, an intact group entailing 29 native English-speaking adults (aged 19-43) enrolled in a lower-intermediate Qur’anic course was selected through purposive sampling in which outliers were removed (N=27). The remaining participants underwent three sessions of morphological instruction on some of the challenging and frequent Qur’anic roots and morphemes and then took part in three different reading tests on a standard Arabic text, a pseudo-word text, and a Qur’anic text. The results of an analysis through ANOVA (F (2, 72) = 67.483, p = .000) showed that the group performed differently in the three tests, i.e., the morphology instruction enhanced their performance in reading the Qur’anic text as well as the standard Arabic text while leaving the performance on the pseudo-word text almost unaffected. The post-hoc test showed that this effect was strongest in the Qur’anic test, revealing that Qur’anic reading  is significantly affected by morphological awareness-raising. This indicates that raising awareness of morphology through instruction promotes the reading of difficult languages such as the Holy Qur’an and standard Arabic. These findings have implications for Qur’anic teachers, learners, and Arabic language practitioners.