The Quranic word al-awliya'

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), May 14, 2011 at 07:38

Hi Lactantius

You must pardon me but you have to go to the source and I suggest that one should not use translations as most translations are poor and tendentious and written by people whose command of Arabic and the history of the arabic language is poor and their command of Syriac and Hebrew and Ethiopic and Latin and Greek (the main source of foreign words in the Qur'an) is just as poor. Or as we that study history insist that you have to eaxmine the source behind the literary source you are quoting and the worst translation is that by Yusuf Ali and the Saudis know that

Your number one source to check the meaning of an Arabic word is qamoos/mu3jam (dictionary) Lisan al-Arab by Ibn Manzur And yes it was written 600 years after the death of Muhammad and it is really middle Arabic than Quranic Arabic or the so called classical Arabic, a language that no one speaks not back then or even now as it is an artificial language that refelcts what the ulama that worked on the masora believed that the Qur'an is saying

Now let me take you one more step: Quranic terms as al-awliya' are also used in modern calssical Arabic and awliya' is a stable word because of the fact that it is a Quranic word and it has the same meaning as was establised in the great masoritic commentaries by the likes of al-Tabari and for more confirmation look it up in Lisan al-Arab

Now do i turst any translation? No I do not

So all you need to do is to look up the meaning of the word al-awliya' is to look up in a modern Arabic/English dictionary as HW and for this see page 1100B under wal' and let me write it for you

"friendship amity benevolance good will fidelity fealty allegiance devotism loyalty clientage

and the term mu3ahadat al-wala' means the treaty of friendship and if you check Lisan al-Arab this is what you will also find

And the word awliya' here would mean friendship

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