Ibn Warraq and Luxenberg deciphers a very strange word in the Sira

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Sep 22, 2014 at 09:55

Dr. Pipes

This time I want to bring to your attention that Luxenberg also addresses not just the language of the Qur'an but also the language of Ibn Ishaq's Sira

Ibn Ishaq's mother tongue was Syriac. And his grandfather was Christian from Syria so it would not be surprisng if he would use Syriac and Christian terms such as Munahemana (read this as he who rises from death ie The Christ)

There is a strange word in Ibn Hisham's redaction of Ibn Ishaq's Sira and the word is Tahannut or تحنّت and the Ulama had great difficulty in trying to explain such word and we are told that it must be a synonym of Tahhanuf or تحنّف from the word Hanif or حنيف but the word حنيف is really the Syriac word ܚܢܝܦܐ or Hanipa which means idolator. This does not make any sense unless Ibn Ishaq was saying that Muhammad was an idolator and the Ulama knew that much

Luxenberg believes that the word Tahannut is from Syriac Tahananta or ܬܚܢܢܬܐ which means supplication

Why is this important? Because this word Tahannut is used to describe what Muhammad used to do as he used to spend one month in the cave of Hira and indeed supplication would make mose sense as a meaning for such strange word

What is most shocking is that all of this was missed by the western scholars of Islam (Noldeke included) and the Arabic language

Kudos to Luxenberg

Wansbrough believed that those that study the early Arabic language must examine the language of the very early Arabic sources (the sira, Fiqh Akbar, letters, papyri, inscriptions, chancery papyri from the Umayyad's period etc...) because this could tell us a lot about the evolution of the Arabic language and it could shed light on the very obscure words in the Qur'an

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".