Science of Readings and its relationship to Arabic Linguistics

Abstract

The variant readings of the Qur’an are considered the most important sources upon which grammarians established grammar. They represent a fertile environment for the diversity of grammatical rules and differing views among readers of the Qur’an in one hand and among grammarians on the other hand. Different structures lead to different interpretations of meanings, and similarly, grammatical differences in the readings of the Qur’an lead to greatly uneven differences in the verses of the Qur’an. The attention paid to grammatical, morphological and phonological aspects for the different readings is of a great value; because the Arabic language is broadly expanded by its extended number of morphological and grammatical structures that accommodate the meaning. The reason for these differences, from the researcher’s viewpoint, refers to the existing differences in the approaches used by both teams. Therefore, the aim of this research is to discuss Science of Readings, the pillars of the correct reading, the disagreements between readers and linguists and the representation of such disagreements with some linguists’ criticisms directed towards readers. The researcher adopted a descriptive approach along with an analytical approach in this research. Based on this, the study achieved these most important findings: the readings of the Qur’an represent an honest mirror of the linguistic reality before the descent of the Qur’an. They are an important source of studying the Arabic language and its different dialects in their phonological, morphological and grammatical phenomena. The disagreements between readers and grammarians are grounded in the approach-related disagreements between them. While the readers’ approach is based on narration, presentation and performance, the grammarians’ approach is based on hearing and analogy. The grammarians criticized readers in some issues, and all their criticism was paid off, either because their criticism focused on the abnormal readings, which had no value, or their criticism was not permitted to one linguistic school while being permitted by another school, or this criticism was directed towards the frequent reading to the Messenger of Allah-Allah peace be upon him and suffice it to state that frequent narration is an argument in the language.