A few years ago I published this analysis of Surat Al-Kawthar 108. Surprisingly, I just ran into the same sura analyzed on YouTube in an entirely different way with amazing results!
This video is by Binimad Al-‘Ateeki, who’s done some pretty impressive numerical miracle videos on the Quran, among other things. What’s interesting here is that his video shows us the same sura with some amazing results involving the number ten. Whereas I got what I thought were pretty fascinating results involving the number nine! So how did this happen?
You can download it here: first is an updated explanation in text, and the one below it is a brief one-pagesummary + a Quranic Architecture chart for illustration:
This is a shortened version of the original that may help assimilate the idea (which can get very complex the more details you include). Photo of Al-Fatiha’s structure is below.
The video below is of a Quran recitation in a stadium in Tanzania, showing just how Quran recitation is an experience. (Try doing that with the Bible. It’s just not the same.)
The word Quran means “The Recitation,” and it was sent to prophet Mohammad to his heart as an audible message.
26:192 This is certainly a revelation from the Lord of all worlds, 26:193 which the trustworthy spirit ˹Jibreel˺ brought down 26:194into your heart—so that you may be one of the warners—26:195 in a clear Arabic tongue.
Recitation involves direct audience participation and is thus an experience. Its sound has a preternatural effect. It can take you out of this world for a moment and connect you to Allah, to remember your higher calling. Below is a recitation by AbdulBasit Abdussamad (transliterations vary), a famous Egyptian reciter, of Surat Al-Duha 93 and Surat Al-Sharh 94, often read as a pair as he does here.
Note: a reciter of the Quran is a Qari, the Arabic word for reciter. Although it is read with intonation, it is not considered “music” per se because he exclusively reads Quran, although in this recitation he inserted a separate dhikr (mentioning of Allah) in between the surahs at one point. He also repeats the words occasionally, a common practice among reciters. Wikipedia refers to him as a “musician” which is utterly erroneous. The intonations are spontaneous, inspired by the words, not “musical compositions” in any sense.
The number 19 is, for a number, relatively famous (or perhaps infamous) as a Quranic number, but is mentioned in the Quran (74:30) and is a factor of the number of suras in the Quran, 114 = 6 x 19. The number 9.5 is not known to be significant, but revealed a significance while studying the metaphor of the chambered nautilus and its significance in the Quran. That is explained elsewhere on this blog, but I will flesh it out separately here. The numbers 9.5 and 19 are formative elements in the design of Quranic Architecture as discussed on this blog. In its calendric architecture, the Quran is divided into 12 months for each “year,” or each complete turn of the spiral. For 114 suras, there are 9.5 years, expressed by an equation: 114 ➗ 12 = 9.5. Then when we multiply 9.5 x 2 = 19, we can ask the question “is there any significance to this equation in terms of the meaning of the Quran?” And the answer is a resounding YES! Explained below:
This sura’s power lies in its sounds, and it’s message. Of course, those sounds can only be heard in Arabic; but before presenting how that works, notice how the message is described in a series of unexpected connections. The first unexpected element is how a “fault-finding backbiter” is not found fault with because of his backbiting, but rather from his amassing of wealth and counting it. Backbiters are not associated with wealth, but rather with gossip. And this guy’s big sin is counting his wealth? Nowadays, one might ask, “well, shouldn’t someone with money count it to know how much he has? What’s wrong with that? And who thinks having money will make them immortal? So ok, backbiting is bad, and I suppose greed is bad too, but fire? Aren’t these guys the supply side who get the economy going? Reserve hell for the murderers and rapists.” But let’s look a little deeper.
This sura is usually presented as a straight-up story about how Allah the Almighty protected the Kaaba and also the Quraish tribe (of prophet Mohammad) in a mighty victory over Abraha’s powerful army, famous for using an elephant or elephants as mounts in battle, and known to be capable of causing destruction wherever they went. The traditional story is that Allah sent flocks of birds to attack Abraha’s army, pelting them with stones “of baked-hard clay”, rendering the army “like chewed-up hay.” It is said this event occurred in the year when prophet Mohammad (pbuh) was born, considered a very good omen, due to the amazing victory that Allah produced alone with no human input (except the du’a of prophet Ibrahim untold ages earlier). We will examine the range of meaning in the sura’s Arabic words shown in various interpretations of the details, also noting its is pairing with the sura that follows it, Surat Al-Quraish discussed here, and more, including 2 Nouman Ali Khan videos on the subject.
This short sura begins with the first words of the Quran sent down to prophet Mohammad, Recite in the name of your Lord who created. Although often in studying this aya, we dwell on the word “recite,” what is really most important is in the name of your Lord who created. Notice that the first words sent are an invocation, in that sense like Al-Fatiha which begins with the Basmalah, a major invocation of Allah’s names.
Here, however, the word “bism” (in the name of) is spelled differently than in the Basmalah, with four letters باسم instead of three as in the Basmalah بسم even though the grammatical usage is the same. And here we are given the expression “Your Lord,” the relationship word for Allah—but no name, whereas in the Basmalah we are given three names. Or is indeed the expression “Lord” essentially a name? Yes, if it is properly described in some way referring to Allah: and here it is clearly described as Who created. With a fascinating set of repeated words, which give power to the presentation, a crescendo that culminates in a surprise ending. Allah the Exalted shows us the meaning and power of that relationship between our Creator and us.
Since I use this term more often as the study of Quranic architecture develops, it’s important to discuss it separately. It simply refers to the “pie sections” in the spiral/circle of the Quranic architecture, and each of these pie sections or houses represents the same month of the symbolic “year” in its calendar design. Each sura within that House is like a return to the same month, but in a different year, just like one returns to January or July each year. So for example, Al-Fatiha (the Opening) is in the First House representing Muharram (Prohibition) in the Hijri calendar, which is also the New Year. All the suras in the First House are also in Muharram, the same “month:” such as Al-R’ad (Thunder) sura 13, and Al-Furqan (The Criterion), sura 25; these suras also carry some of the same relevant meanings for that House/month. Thunder is like an initiating force, thundering us into awareness of something new, electrifying (“new year”); the word furqan actually means to “break open/apart” and thus distinguish (“criterion”) between the dichotomies, such as good/bad and heaven/hell (“opening”). The final sura in the First House is Al-Kafiroon “The Disbelievers” – a fitting end for “Prohibition,” as these are the people who will be prohibited from the celestial realm of Allah in paradise.
There is no dispute that the Basmalah contains the first words one reads in the Quran, and in that sense one could consider it the gateway into the Quran. Similarly, as the “opening” to the Quran, most graphically illustrated in the “nautilus shell” architecture discussed on this site, Al-Fatiha (the first sura whose name literally means “opening”) is our point of entry into the Quran, establishing its perimeters, in particular the primacy of salat, of connecting to Allah the Exalted. But it also symbolizes the gate to paradise as is mentioned in three ayat discussed below. Because of course, the Quran is our guide to how to get through the coming catastrophe of Al-Akhira to the ultimate success that transcends the tests and suffering of our brief mortal existence.
This may seem to be an obvious “given” any Muslim would deem true of the Quran. Yet surprisingly other ideas have made their way into “mainstream” Islamic belief. This article addresses the history of compiling and numbering the Quran, an interesting subject indeed, fleshed out here in great detail. But in the process states this:
The order of the surahs was not based on the order the archangel Gabriel gave them to Prophet Muhammad, but on the consensus of the companions. (Emphasis mine.)
With all due respect, this is an assumption based on anecdotal and certainly non-Quranic sources that directly contradicts the Quran, a fact of which the author(s) of this article and possibly also their source(s) may not have been fully aware. Although the order of revelation differs from the final arrangement, this is by Allah’s design, and the final arrangement was given directly through Jibreel (Gabriel) to prophet Mohammad, not a decision made by sahaba after his death. Saying that it was presumes it is somehow out of Allah’s jurisdiction – while we should know that everything is in Allah’s jurisdiction.
This sura shoots straight to the issue of our time and of all times where civilizations teeter on the brink of collapse, and always for the same reason, greed and the competition for continuous nonstop increase — today, it’s called capitalism, about which journalist George Monbiot says “Capitalism is just a means by which something even bigger is pursued. Wealth.” This is the very subject of this sura: “Vying for more preoccupies you” — more wealth. And that pursuit as it is literally capitalized on and emphasized in modern developed countries as the whole point of life, is actually killing us and destroying the ecosystems we need for the survival of humanity. Not to mention the insanely prevalent injustice to the majority of the human race. Contrary to what we are told.
This sura directly follows Surat Al-Fil 105, “The Elephant,” and relates to it in that it was the destruction of the army of the elephant (described in Surat Al-Fil) that saved the “secure passage” for trade and pilgrimage that brought the Quraish tribe of Mecca their prestige and successful trade in the region. Thus the last verse of 105:5 where Allah “made them (that attacking army) like chewed-up straw,” was “for the secure passage” of their trade caravans, as if completing the sentence from 105:5. This makes suras 105 and 106 a “pair.”
The Basmalah precedes every surah except Al-Tawba, “Repentance,” for a profound reason, not just as a “fluke” confusing the two adjacent suras, Al-Tawba (9) with Al-Anfaal (8). In fact, we can understand the reason for the missing Basmalah from the surah that follows it, Yunus (Jonah). First, note that the Basmalah is the featured dhikr in the Quran, highlighting that the Quran is directly from Allah the Most High, and it shows the dynamic nature of our Creator as Almighty, All-Merciful, the ultimate authority and ultimate source of comfort, meaning, and security. Without knowledge of and faith in Him, our lives would be random and meaningless. Are we seriously satisfied to think that after we die, all that’s left is our bodies which disintegrate and everything we thought or believed or did or felt is for no reason? Do we seriously see truth and beauty in the concept, tossed around these days to “make sense of it all,” that we “become stardust?” So the Basmalah encapsules that which gives meaning and value to existence: Allah the Almighty All-Merciful. Rejecting this in effect dissociates us from Him. And the first word in Al-Tawba is “dissociated.” From which the only way out is tawba, repentance.
This sounds counterintuitive, but while discussing the nature of “conquest” in the Quran in my previous post, it occurred to me the root-word connection between fat’h meaning “conquest” and “Al-Fatiha” — the name of the Quran’s first sura — meaning “the opening,” has implications for the first sura itself. In that post I noted how the fact that both words share a root affects the understanding of of the word “conquest” to have a different nuance to it than the English definition and sense of “conquest” as being more of an “opening” in the conflict than merely a subjugation or advantage that often lends to the winner oppressing the loser. But could that same sort of victory or opening in a conflict also deepen our understanding of Al-Fatiha?
Surat At-Teen (“The Fig”) 95 brings us more than meets the eye. Often not much attention is paid to the oaths that headline some surahs, but they do indeed have meaning as we shall see here. This is also a highly integrated and “celestial” surah that brings us a wealth of clarity to the idea that Islam is specifically designed by Allah as a system which, if we follow its beautiful and enlightened path, will enable us to become the enlightened and even “celestial” beings we were created to be. (Below is a YouTube reading of the surah in Arabic with the text as a visual.)
The color-coding connects these lines, not in the mirror pattern of a ring composition, but rather connects the upper and lower halves in order as shown by matching the colors: the upper referring to this world from the our human point of view, and the lower being from Allah the Exalted’s point of view. Here almost every element lends to an intense convergence of two very different worlds.
Despite the Basmalah (pictured above) being the first aya of Surat Al-Fatiha in most printed copies of the Quran including those printed in Saudi Arabia (a copy of the Quran in writing being called a mus’haf not a Quran), there are Muslims, especially of the Hanafi and Hanbali schools of the Sunnis, who believe the first numbered verse of Al-Fatiha to be not the Basmalah but instead what is aya 2 in its most commonly printed text meaning “Praise be to Allah, the Lord of all worlds!” (Pictured below.) We shall discuss the differences of opinion and examine the implications of each.
This represents Ulam’s Number Spiral , where a doodle (this image) revealed unexpected previously-unknown diagonal patterns in prime numbers. The name ”Ulam” is similar to the Arabic root for ”knowledge” or “scholar.”
This study of Sura 92’s word and letter counts brought entirely unexpected results on closer examination. The Quran expresses its message, its truth, in powerful and eloquent words, and also within these words, numerical relationships of precision and beauty, using the language of math like a true language, complete with nuance, even rhyme and reason, certainly complexity that is beyond the scope of my knowledge. To interpret them requires viewing numbers as more than mere quantitative bits of data. No, they have qualities and are symbolic as well, which doesn’t occur in a vacuum but rather in their context — in the world around us, in life and everything else. Here are numbers that give precision to this sura’s beauty, and reveal how much Allah has put into simply guiding us. Imagine then this is from Allah the Almighty All-Merciful, and imagine Who then is Allah and what does He give us in this Quran — nothing less than a lifeline to His love.
Surat Al-Layl 92 is the gift that keeps on giving unexpected insights, tightly integrated on many levels. Its 21 ayat/verses can be divided into 3 parts of 7 ayat each, a striking symmetry, and this within a separate ring arrangement based on the division between this world and the Hereafter. The sura’s emphasis on the primacy of charitable acts as proof of faith and other meaningful details are powerfully reflected in its structure as well.
114 Chambers 