Saturday, May 9, 2020

New sura revealed

The text as far as the New Arab relates: كوفيد والفيروس المبيد، بل عجبوا أن جاءهم من الصين البعيد، فقال الكافرون إنّه مرض عنيد، كلا بل هو الموت الاكيد

Translation: COVÎD! and by The Virus! Nay, they were astonished that <it> came to them from China distant. So said the deniers: it is a stubborn disease! By no means - it is death certain.

Standard saj' style, down to the last dropped pronoun and superfluous bal. I might have put a hâdhâ but far be it from me to question the kalimatullah.

The mard for "disease" denotes, I think, the minor afflictions. Agapius used tâ'ûn for the full-on wabâ plague.

I note one loanword: fîrûs. This is a rare Latin word like burûj and sirât. This one reads as (very) Late-Antique; Classical should prefer wîrus - I can understand why not wîr given possible confusion with Latin vir. Possible fîrûs came by way of Byzantine Greek which was, I think, already aspirating the beta. Kûbîd is another loan, from the same post-Latin source (corona, here). Again, that it's not Qûwîd implies a kappa language, like Greek, and not directly Latin which re-introduced K and retains Q.

Interesting that they don't just say "microbiota", the actual Greek. The best bet is that these loans came by way of Greek-trained Melkite physicians from Edessa, short on Greek medical texts, so transcribing from some second-hand Latin smuggled to them from Syracuse or Carthage.

The 'anîd, suras 11 and 14 had applied to the tyrants of 'Âd who resisted God's Signs; Q. 74:24 takes it from there. Likewise kullan features in all three suwar. kulla kaffarin 'anîdin further crops up in sura 50; the bal 'ajibû an jâ'ahum beginning is sura 50's second verse. fa-qala al-kafirûna (and not kuffâr) also.

I don't see any reason it can't be canon.

If some unbelievers belie it and say this is a clear forgery, the unbelievers of yore had belied the like of it before you, about sura 50. (Those days being *checks* 23 April, in my case: "Q for Qurrâ’".)

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