A Very Concerned Reader: Surat al-Ahqaf 21 and Transliteration! Let us read what Mr. Khattab's translation

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Apr 11, 2021 at 13:37

Surat al-ahqaf 21 says:

وَاذْكُرْ أَخَا عَادٍ إِذْ أَنذَرَ قَوْمَهُ بِالْأَحْقَافِ

This can be rendered as: And mention the brother of 'Ad when he warned his people about the Ahqaf (notice I left the word untranlated because this word does not have a clear meaning).

Well, the word Ahqaf has no clear meaning. However, al-Tabari comes to the rescue and he tells us that the word al-Ahqaf means: جمع حقف وهو من الرمل ما استطال, ولم يبلغ أن يكون جبلا or: Ahqaf is the plural of Haqf and it is elongated sand and is not yet a mountain. Notice that al-Tabari had no idea where are those Ahqaf.

This is how the word is translated and you will notice that non of those that provided a translation really seem to agree on the meaning of the word: Sand-dunes, Ahqaf (left untranslated), Sand tracts, sand hills.

Here check this:

https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=46&verse=21

The truth is no one has a clue what the word really means. Now, if you check an Arabic dictionary the likes of Ibn Manzur Lisan al-Arabic here is what "Sand-dune" in Arabic: al-Katheeb al-Ramli or الكثيب الرملي

https://www.almaany.com/en/dict/ar-en/sand-dune/

And here is Tafsir al-Tabari

https://www.altafsir.com/Tafasir.asp?tMadhNo=1&tTafsirNo=1&tSoraNo=46&tAyahNo=21&tDisplay=yes&Page=1&Size=1&LanguageId=1

So what is al-Ahqaf?

Well, let us see what Mr. Khattab's translation:

https://quran.com/46/21

He calls al-Ahqaf: Sand hills (Sand-dunes)?

This means that he got it from al-Tabari and that is indeed why translation of the Qur'an is easy if one is careless

Now, Gerd Puin believes that this is a misreading of a Garshouni text (Arabic texts written using Syriac alphabet and this was a common practice before the stabilization of the Arabic alphabet).

So this is the word as it would appear in a Garshouni text: ܒܐ ܠܐܥܡܩ or ܒܐܠ ܥܡܩ

For those of you that can read Arabic let us concentrate on ܐܥܡܩ and notice the first letter is Syiac Alif and can also be written as: /ا/ . So what most likely happened is that the word was read as احقف or Ahqaf (the Syriac alif stays the same, the Syriac 'Ayn is misread as Arabic Ha ح and the Syriac M is misread as Arabic Qaf ق and the Syriac M is misread as Arabic ف and now we have this strange word Ahqaf احقف/احقاف.

So what does the correct Arabic word would be? It is اعمق/اعماق or The Deep and the verse should be read as: "in the deep places" and indeed the meaning of the verse becomes clear.

And once the switch from Syriac to Arabic alphabet took place there was no going back. And a reminder to the readers: The Arabic alphabet, or so we are told by Ahl al-Nahw al-Arabi is from Syriac alphabet.

Now this above great word was done by Gerd Puin and you can find it in his "Leuke Kome." pages 335-360 and here is the link to the book:

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Origins-Islam-Research-2009-07-30/dp/B01FIXOXO2/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=The+hidden+origins+of+Islam&qid=1618162064&s=books&sr=1-2

Dear readers: You think we should tell Mr. Khattab or not?

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