Reason #40: How did an illiterate person who didn’t like poetry write the Quran?

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You might have heard that Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) was illiterate, but did you know that he did not like poetry nor understand all of its nuances? In fact, God in the Qur’an says,

“We have not taught him poetry, nor is it fitting for him…”

[Qur’an 36:69]

It is strange, in the Arabian world during his time, to have a person who did not appreciate poetry. After all, poetry was the Arabs’ prized possession. They did not have wealth like the Byzantines and Persians did. They did not have natural resources like them either. Oil was only discovered recently. But what they had was a beautiful language. A comprehensive one, where each word can have multiple meanings and a change in a single vowel can change an entire sentence! Thus, one can imagine how much the Arabs cherished their language and respected the poets and their works.

With Prophet Muhammad, it is narrated that his wife, ‘Aishah (رَضِيَ ٱللَّٰهُ عَنْهَا), was asked whether he would recite poetry and she replied that poetry was the most despised speech to him. She remarked that once he tried to recite some lines of poetry and ended up reversing the order of its last words. At that point Abu Bakr, her father and the closest companion of Prophet Muhammad, said: “It is not quite like that,” and the Prophet replied, “Indeed, by Allah, I am not a poet and nor is it befitting for me.”

And that’s something that Prophet Muhammad’s opponents could not have an answer for – how can the Qur’an, something full of literary gems, be invented by a person who could not read, write, nor appreciate poetry? They couldn’t counterattack logically and thus, propagated that he was either a fortune-teller, madman, or a magician. However, these claims, Muslims state, are actually proofs for the Qur’an. Instead of a proper response, they made foolish claims that proved futile, and indirectly showed that the Qur’an had to be from God!

As God says,

“You ˹O Prophet˺ could not read any writing ˹even˺ before this ˹revelation˺, nor could you write at all. Otherwise, the people of falsehood would have been suspicious.” 

[Qur’an 29:48]

Reason #39: Iron in the Quran

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Ah, iron. our beloved metal. Where do we begin with its benefits? LiveScience has a nice article on it online, which you can find on the footnote1. However, as you may know, because it is used to make steel, much of our refined metals have iron in it. It is also in us, specifically in hemoglobin, which is a protein in our blood that carries oxygen. It is even important for plants in the production of chlorophyll.

So where are we going with all this? In the Qur’an, God says in Surah Al-Hadid (The Iron),

“Indeed, We sent Our messengers with clear proofs, and with them We sent down the Scripture and the balance ˹of justice˺ so that people may administer justice. And We sent down iron with its great might, benefits for humanity…“

[Qur’an 57:25]

What’s unique is that God usually says He creates something. He mentions in the Qur’an how he created us, the heavens, Earth, life, and death. He could’ve said that here as well, or even said “We dug out” because iron is mined, but He didn’t. So why say “sent”?

Muslims believe that because the Qur’an is God’s speech, He is specific with His word choice and what you may not know is that actually, a lot of iron on the Earth’s crust is not from here! In fact, scientists say they came from supernovas of stars in the form of flying objects, such as meteorites. They’re even given a specific name – iron meteorites. When some massive stars die, they explode, and the iron in them spread throughout space, sometimes colliding with other heavenly bodies, and this planet happened to be one of them. Thus, the word “sent” makes sense!

Now it gets more interesting! When the Qur’an was revealed, Arabic numbers we know of today did not exist. A system was used where the letters of the Arabic alphabets were used as numbers. The number assigned to each letter is its “Gematrical Value” or Abjad value. Other cultures in the past have done this as well.

When you take the Arabic letters of “Hadid”, from the title of the Surah, you get ha which equals 8, da which equals 4, ya which equals 10, and again da which equals 4. The sum is 26. What’s so special about that? Well, what’s the atomic number of iron? That’s right – 26! Now if you add the definitive “Al” (meaning “The”) before the Hadid, alif equals 1 and lam equals 30. That is 31, and 26 + 31 is 57. Al-Hadid is also the 57th Surah in the Qur’an!

But wait, there’s more! Some Islamic scholars suggest that the phrase “Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem”, which appears in the beginning of every Surah, except one (Surah Ar-Rahman), is considered an Ayah when you count the total Ayahs of a Surah. Some say it is not. Regardless, we get some interesting facts both ways. If you count that as the 1st Ayah, iron is mentioned in the 26th Ayah. And if you don’t count it, the word “Allah” is mentioned 26 times from the beginning of the Surah up to the ending of the Ayah that mentions iron! Go ahead and check!

To end it all, iron has four stable isotopes: 54, 56, 58, aaaaaaannnddddd you might have guessed it, 57! In fact, 57 is special too because it is the only one amongst them that has a negative spin.

Yes, sometimes people look too much into numbers. There can be a serious obsession with coincidences. Some people even use numbers in religious texts to attempt to predict the future! But when one sees all the examples given above, can we truly say these are just coincidences? Or is it perhaps that God, the Creator of the worlds and the Author of the Qur’an from 1,400+ years ago, knew that in the future, there will come about the periodic table and numbers given to isotopes and thus, He chose to crafted this Surah in such a way to make us discover all these hidden gems?

  1. https://www.livescience.com/29263-iron.html