The Four Great Suras of Salat (Prayer)

(Note: New Improved Post, removed the excess for a different post.) The four suras (like chapters/sections) of the Quran most frequently recited in the canonical Islamic prayer called salat are the first sura, Al-Fatiha “The Opening” (1), the quintessential prayer of salat, and the final 3 suras, Al-Ikhlas “Sincerity” (112), Al-Falaq “Daybreak/ Breaking-open” (113), and An-Nass “The People” (114). They are all short suras, making them easy to recite. Allah the All-Merciful wants this prayer to be easy for us, and at the same time a powerful and effective “connection” to Him, to His all-encompassing power and mercy. These four suras form a {2,3,4} set, with three (3) together at the end, and the fourth (4) in the very beginning, and two of these suras form a pair (2) in the “middle.” Thus the end of the Quran re-connects us to the beginning, analogous to how Resurrection and Judgment Day reconnect us to Allah in paradise where Adam was created at the beginning of humanity – if we had faith in Allah, and made a genuine effort in Allah’s path of justice and compassion.

Quranic Architecture as a Calendar

Quranic Architecture as a Calendar with one surah in each chamber.

the-calendar-q-nautilusDownload

Above is an image of the spiral Quranic architecture discussed on this site, where each surah is shown by number in its chamber. Due to size consideration, there’s insufficient room for the surah names; however the first 12 surahs are named, and on the outer edge of the circle are the Hijri calendar names as well as the names of the zodiac constellations.

A full explanation of the calendar design and meaning is above in a downloadable PDF. It shows the exact match between the Quran’s size of 114 Surahs and arrangement here as 9.5 “years” (12-month/ chamber “cycles”) with Noah’s time as prophet of “a thousand years minus fifty years” or 950 years, making this symbolic “calendar” architecture of the Quran an “ark” protecting those who “embark” the Quran’s ark by reading it from the cataclysm of the Day when time as we know it, and therefore the universe as we know it, ceases to exist, that is, the Day of Resurrection or Judgment Day.

Timekeeping is all about changing quite literally “what is between our hands,” the Quran’s expression for the “present”, by increasing its size from a “moment” to “the present day” as it were, and beyond. And the Quran uses this meaning of time in its text and message, so it makes sense that its very architecture would also be a calendar, showing us how to spend our lifetime’s limited term wisely, leading to success outside that lifetime, when this world of time ceases to be.

The Quran’s Architecture as a Calendar, by S. Karami

The Chambered Nautilus and Its Connection to the Quran

X-Ray of a chambered nautilus shell

What is the connection between the Quran and the chambered nautilus shell? The shape fits the gradually descending size of the Quranic surahs, which, unlike chapters in most human-authored books, are each separate self-contained “enclosures” of text — the word “surah” means “enclosure”—, each containing words found only in that surah and nowhere else, yet adjacent surahs are connected by small shared references, all of this being similar to the chambers of the nautilus shell.

For the living nautilus, a cephalopod or “head-foot”, it provides both protection and a system of propulsion capable of “neutral buoyancy,” the same property that keeps the human brain, our “head-foot,” safe from gravity which would otherwise have pulled the brain’s delicate tissue against the skull, damaging our uvery-much-essential neurons. Herein lies a metaphor on many levels.

The downloadable PDF below gives more details of the amazing connections between the Quran and this ancient creature’s shell, long noted for its beauty and inspiring sacred geometry. Beyond that are Quranic and scientific connections which ultimately make this shape the perfect way to present the Quran as a whole, giving us a way to envision and interpret its multiple depths of meaning.

chambered-nautilus-sectionDownload

Also, this link gives a discussion among mathematics and science professors/ scholars on whether or not the chambered nautilus shell is an example of a golden spiral. To which the answer is not precise, but then, life is more complicated than it is precise.

https://114chambers.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/chambered-nautilus-section.docx

A Summary of Quranic Architecture

Unlike most studies of the Quran including studies of its form and structure, this is a vision for the whole Quran in one image, developed using the Quran as a guide, fitting the 114 Surahs in a spiral shell shape like that of the chambered nautilus, in which each surah (the word surah meaning “enclosure”) is envisioned as a separate “chamber,” with 12 surahs per completed “turn” or circle of the spiral, making 9 complete circles and one half-circle. This spiral shape forms a symbolic calendar where each chamber/ surah is one “month”, for a total of 9.5 years. This corresponds to the symbolism of Noah’s ark as his message or Divine revelation whose construction was guided by Allah’s revelations in the same way sacred books were sent. The ark’s being a vessel that protected those who boarded it from the cataclysmic flood symbolically correlates to the Quran as our “ark” protecting those who “board” it—that is, read and be guided by it—from the greatest cataclysm of them all, Judgment Day. The Quran describes Noah as having lived among his people “a thousand years minus fifty years,” or 950 years. Move the decimal point 2 spaces to the left, and you have a match between the time period Noah spent with his people, a kind of “testing” period, and the time period embodied in the Quran’s Architecture as envisioned here, a nautilus-shaped “ark” carrying within it a complete guidance system to safely bring those it “carries” through this life and the coming cataclysm to gardens of unimaginable delight.

The Circle of Time

One of the most important and yet illusory elements of human life is time. It begins for us when we are born and when time as we know it ends, this is signified by our death. So our concept of time is completely tied up, for us, with birth and death. But for Allah, who is neither born nor dies, time cannot be as we know it. For Allah, time has no boundaries. Many thinkers have thought of this as a circle.

A Picture of Time, a Calendar, a Guide

After looking at Al-Fatiha, the first Sura of the Qur’an, it’s time to go back to the overall structure, to see if we can find meaning and purpose in it.