Nuun
Surah 68

You know,

the suras beginning with the Muqatt'at letters

Nuun and Saad

turn out to have a similar problem and a similar solution.

The letter count for the Muqatt'at Nuun

in sura 68

does not come to a number divisible by 19,

which is the way it is,

but it is tantalisingly close,

just one letter short.

And then it was noticed that what is spoken

at the start of the sura

is actually the name of the letter Nuun,

and that name is written

Nuun Waaw Nuun

neatly providing another Nuun

to make the letter count up to 133 19*7

if you wrote it that way.

A cute association with the 19 pattern,

from which we might be able to draw

all manner of ideas,

but that was enough for some to start

demanding changes to the Qur'an,

because as they saw it, the text needed to be 'corrected' to conform to the pattern,

as the pattern was so beautiful and precise

that anything that stood in the way of it

had to be a mistake.

Which is a big claim to make,

giving the numbers precedence over the text,

which means you have to be on solid numerical ground.

If you want the text to conform to numerical rules,

it would be useful if the rules set were consistent,

and counting the Nuun twice

is a rule that is not applied to the Muqatt'at Miims,

and the 19 pattern doesn't even apply to all the Muqatt'at letters.

What other changes might we end up making

to get it even more consistent?

The Qur'an does not have to be consistent

from whatever direction we approach it.

We are not in a position to judge.

God knows the what and why.

The suras go from longest to shortest

sort of

The Muqatt'at

follow a 19 pattern in the surahs

mostly

But the whole of muslim civilisation

from the time of the revelation

was built on the understanding

that God would not allow mistakes in

the preservation of the Qur'an.

At the same time, the Qur'an is preserved

through that civilisation

with a myriad of perceptions and understandings

which have always had challengers

but what is new is that the challengers

claim mathematical beauty

overrides history and tradition.

To disassociate oneself

from all of muslim history

and try to return to some ideal unsullied source

is not unusual in muslim history,

but this time it is given added weight

by the strangeness of the link between

the Revelation and Number.

The fact that number can't be argued away

gives it a different importance,

because numbers stay the same

and can only be accepted or denied.

The letters and words of the text are different.

Now at the time of the revelation

few muslims knew how to read and write,

and their calligraphic skills were clearly limited.

There was no paper

they were scratching words on bits of bone or stone,

or animal skin

and the written language itself was still primitive.

Language was spoken,

it was poetry,

it was oratory.

Language was the principle artform of the Arab tribes.

Calligraphy as an artform developed much later.

Text was just to help the reader to remember.

Those early texts would seem almost illegible today,

with no dots to distinguish between letters

no vowel signs

but they didn't need to be that precise.

The text was never more than a reminder,

a written guide for recitation,

and although it has been a central focus of study

throughout the muslim world for all its history,

it has always been recognised

that vocal recitation takes precedence over written text.

The written text is there to help guide and preserve the spoken word.

The revelation was spoken and heard,

there were no spelling instructions,

so people spelled it

the way the Nuun was meant to be spelled

one way or another.

Enough to say that the pattern works

if it is the name of the letter that is being spoken.

You can't hear the text.

There is no need to change the text

if you just count the letters you can hear.

That is beautiful enough.

Both sides can agree that they hear the same thing

and that it matches

the way that they understand it should be written.

There is no need to battle to change history.

Demands for the Qur'an to be 'corrected' are misguided

and not needed for the number patterns to work.

The reason that the text is the way that it is

is known to God alone.

It is enough for the patterns to work

with the words when they are vocalised,

not counting letters on a page,

only the letters heard.

Is that not magical enough?

The number patterns point

not to the written text

but to the sounds

Everything about the text remains the same.

And scholars of the text

can stop trying to discredit the numbers,

and try to explore what the patterns might imply

what parallels and parables they might draw from them.

While mathematicians can apply their new-fangled computers

to searching for symmetries and frequencies and probabilities,

that have not been discovered as yet

but may well be waiting for the right AI.