The Surah as a Unit

Qur’an

Hamid Uddin Farahi

By this discussion we aim to establish that each surah is a well-structured unit. It is only lack of consideration and analysis on our part that the surahs seem disjointed and incoherent. Every student of the Holy Qur’an can notice that the Qur’an contains both short and long surahs. Each surah imparts a specific message as its central theme which when completed marks the end of the surah. If there were no such specific conclusion intended to be dealt with in each surah, there would be no need to divide the Qur’an in surahs. Rather the whole Qur’an would have formed a single surah. We also know that the surahs are not equal in length. There are longer surahs and shorter ones. Had God not intended dealing a specific issue in each surah in a well-coherent fashion, He would not have threaded the verses in a single unifying thread. He would have, on the contrary, scattered everything casually whereby some of the surahscould have comprised of a single line.

We see that a set of verses has been placed together and named surah the way a city is built with a wall erected round it. A single wall must contain a single city in it. What is the use of a wall encompassing different cities? Another thing that needs to be appreicated is that each surah does not discuss a seperate issue. Everybody knows that the last two surahs are remarkably similar in their  contents yet they are not considered one surah. Both of these have always been considered independent and distinct units. Similary, Surah Takwir (Abundance, 108), Surah Inshiqaq (The Rending, 84), Surah Mursalat (Those that are sent forth, 77), Surah Nazi‘at (Those that snatch away, 79) and Surah Dhariyat (The Winds, 51) address similar issues. But their structure as well as style of expression is completely different.

We also see that when the Quraysh were not able to compose ten surahs of the quality of the Qur’anic surahs,they were challenged to try composing even one. They were, however, not asked to compose something less than a surah. This challenge implied all the surahs, long or shortr, but it no way implied a given length of discourse lacking qualities of a surah. Some of the Muslim exegetes have missed this fact. They thought that the Quraysh were challenged to compose a number of verses of the length of a surah. Then they had to go a great length to see what aspect of inimitability was required of such a quanity of Qur’anic verses. For example, the verse (4: 23) حُرِّمَتْ عَلَيْكُمْ أُمَّهَاتُكُمْ وَبَنَاتُكُمْ (Forbidden to you are your mothers, your daughters, (4:23)) is longer than Surah Kawthar. This made them wonder what aspect of inimitibility was involved in this lengh of discourse which was more than a surah but not a surah in its form. In fact the Holy Qur’an did not challenge them to carve a discoure equal or above than a surah but a surah as a unit containing a meaningful well-ordered discourse. All jinn and humans can never succeed in composing a surah of the same grandeur or even smaller than Surah Kawthar. The above mentioned facts lead us to conclude that in the Qur’anic challenge to the Quraysh, by a surah, God meant a well-structured and coherent discourse. The length of such a discourse was not relevent. Just as the common words like tree, plants and animals etc are applied to a class of things disregarding any kind of difference in the members of such a class, the word surah covers all surahs, short and longe. Some of the earlier scholars expressed similar views which corroborates our thesis. Suyuti writes:

قال الجعيري حد السورة قرآن يشتمل على آي ذي فاتحة وخاتمة و أقلها ثلاث آيات

Ju‘ayri has said: “A surah is defined as a set of Qur’anic verses which contain an introduction and a conclusion. The least amount of verses in a surah is three.”[1]

I, however, define a surah as a set of verses which is a well-knit discourse dealing with a specific theme. This set of verses must contain an introduction, a central theme and a conclusion. Therefore the minimum number of verses in each surah is three.

A study of the shorter surahs reveals that they peer the longer ones in that they are equally well-knit coherent chapters. The shorter surahs contain all the elements of beautiful ordering and well-structuredness, the characterisics of the longer ones. Therefore, to hold that the shorter surahs like Surah Kawthar (108), Surah Ma‘un (107) and Surah ‘Asr (103) do not contain any fine coherence would be wrong. Understanding inner-connectedness of the shorter surahs can greatly be helpful in deciphering the coherence in the longer surahs. Similarly, some of the longer surahs contain passages which are well-knit in obvious fashion. Only a dull-minded person can fail to notice it. For example, first twenty verses of Surah Baqarah(2) are manifestly well-knit. When a student ponders over such passages in smaller surahs, he develops the ability to discocver finer points of interconnetion in other surahs. I have come to understand the coherence in the Qur’an in this very manner. I am certain that any person who intends to seriously ponder over the Holy Qur’an in this aspect will be able to understand the coherence in the Qur’an. For “those who adopted the right path, he increased their guidance”. [2]

(Translated from Farahi’s Majmu‘ah Tafasir by Tariq Hashmi)