Abjad
Numbering

Now

the Abjad alphabet provided a way to record a variety of numbers,

units from one to nine,

tens to ninety,

and hundreds to a thousand,

but in a society where nothing much was written down,

the writing of numbers was surely as rare

as the recording of speech and thoughts in writing.

Perhaps when there was the need

for a clear and precise record of a transaction,

but even that would have been difficult with the numbers as letters

as long as many of the letter scripts were indistinguishable.

They had to be treated a different way

to distinguish from word text,

putting lines over the number letters,

or using different colours from the rest of the script.

And pen and paper would not have been available as they are now,

though they would have had access to papyrus from Egypt,

or they could make vellum

for words and numbers that they really wanted to last.

And a highly nomadic tribal society

has less concern for permanent physical records

than a centralised state

like that of the Pharaohs.

But the Messenger encouraged everyone

to learn to read and write,

to help them remember and pass on

the words he was receiving.

And with the death of the Messenger,

and the end of that time of Revelation,

those words were written over and over again,

passed on from one generation to the next,

and as the Arabic script developed

to give more precision to the text of the Qur'an,

so the use of the Abjad system also grew.

And as the muslim culture expanded around the globe,

this synergy between word and number

was used to explore the worlds of philosophical understandings.

Those magic squares were not only

associated with different heavenly bodies,

their letters were word puzzles that could be solved.

Words from letters from numbers

numbers from letters from words,

used as a guide

for inner understanding, knowledge and expression.

Of course,

over the centuries that the Qur'an has been explored through the lens of the Abjad structure

all manner of intriguing links and inter-relationships have been found,

and just as with so many other disciplines,

the mathematical force of the computer

has opened up previously unattainable realms

that bring with them the shock of change.

So it all became rather uncomfortable

when the Abjad numbers seemed to be linked to computer studies of letter counts in the Qur'an

showing number patterns around the number nineteen.

Some loudly hailed these patterns

as an undeniable proof of God's existence,

when unfortunately for their arguments

it was clear that many many people

had no problem at all in denying it,

for all manner of reasons.

And frustration in argument easily leads to abuse.

But why would anyone want to believe in something

if it seems to lead to giving abuse to anyone who doesn't think the same way?

The greatest of miracles weren't enough

for many of those who witnessed them.

The Messengers have always been mocked

and called fraudsters and liars,

even tortured and killed,

so why expect a different response

to what you have to say is undeniable.

God grants faith,

and 'proof' is only obvious afterwards,

and different people need different things

to open their hearts to belief.

Is it not enough to see the perfect alignment

of the sun and moon in a total eclipse,

or the lightning hinting at Divine Power,

with the thunder singing God's praises?

What about the seas

filled with provision,

giving birth to the clouds,

which rise up for the winds to blow around the earth

and fall as rain on dead land and bring it back to life?

and look at the stars

What makes the Qur'an a miracle

is that it was a brief moment

an event in time and space

when God interacted directly with the human world,

using human language.

It's miraculous quality

is not as vivid to imagine as the miracles of Moses and Jesus,

but for those early muslims, they were shaping their lives around it,

and the beauty of it overwhelmed them.

The miracle of the Red Sea parting

was a singular event,

so great an event that its story has been passed down to the present day,

but like Noah's Ark, it often tends to be dismissed as a children's fairy tale.

The Qur'an is different.

It is precise words,

those revealed to the Messenger over a period of 23 years

in which the muslim way of life was established,

preserved in the memories and prayers

of generations of men and women,

and written down to help them remember.

Numbers are not a substitute for that.

nineteen p.156