At a glance
- Region
- al-Andalus & Europe
Summary
In the introduction to his commentary al-Qurtubi has a chapter titled 'Whether there are words in the Qur'an outside the languages of the Arabs, or not'. 1 He states that the community does not disagree that the Qur'an contains no speech composed in non-Arab styles, and that it contains proper names of people whose tongue was not Arabic, such as Isra'il, Jibril, Imran, Nuh and Lut; the disagreement concerns single words that are not names. 1
Ibn Atiyya's argument
Ibn Atiyya argues, as al-Qurtubi quotes him, that an Arab might not know one of these words just as he might not know plain words of another dialect — as Ibn Abbas did not know the meaning of 'fatir' until he heard two Bedouins use it. 2
Disagreement and views
Notes for researchers
- The chapter's examples of words ascribed to other languages come from Qur'anic verses; their wording is not reproduced here.
Opinions on the question
The question: Arabized foreign words in the Qur'an
First opinion · Sunni tradition (the museum's frame) · Sunni: al-Baqillani and al-TabariMain reference
Connections
People and things also explored
Jami' al-Bayan (Tafsir al-Tabari)· The seven ahruf· Tafsir by opinion (bi'l-ra'y)· al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an (Tafsir al-Qurtubi)· al-Muharrar al-Wajiz fi Tafsir al-Kitab al-'Aziz (Tafsir Ibn Atiyya)· Ibn Atiyah al-Andalusi· Fath al-Qadir (al-Shawkani's commentary on the Qur'an)· Fabrication of hadith (wad' al-hadith)
Sources
- al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an — al-Qurtubi, ed. Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muhsin al-Turki (Mu'assasat al-Risala, 2006), vol. 1 , p.110
- al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an — al-Qurtubi, ed. Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Muhsin al-Turki (Mu'assasat al-Risala, 2006), vol. 1 , p.111
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “Does the Qur'an contain words from languages other than Arabic?”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/questions/does-the-quran-contain-non-arabic-words/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-11-04.
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