the artificial music of the organ, having within itself the true music of the human soul. Even if a translation could convey something of the grand and rich ideas of the Holy Qur’ān, it could not convey the music which, along with the idea, exercises such a potent influence on the mind of man. A Western orientalist remarks in the introduction of his translation of the Holy Qur’ān: “The Arabs made use of a rhymed and rhythmical prose, the origin of which it is not difficult to imagine. The Arabic language consists for the most part of triliteral roots, i.e., the single words expressing individual ideas consist generally of three consonants each, and the derivative forms expressing modifications of the original idea are not made by affixes and terminations alone but also by the insertion of letters in the root … A sentence, therefore, consists of a series of words which would each require to be expressed in clauses of several words in other languages, and it is easy to see how a next following sentence, explanatory of or completing the first, would be much more clear and forcible if it consisted of words of a similar shape and implying similar modifications of other ideas. It follows then that the two sentences would be necessarily symmetrical, and the presence of rhythm would not only please the ear but contribute to the better understanding of the sense, while the rhyme would mark the pause in the sense and emphasize the proportion.”5

Another orientalist pays a tribute to the language of the Holy Qur’ān as follows: “The language has the ring of poetry, though no part of the Kurān complies with the demands of Arab metre. The sentences are short and full of half-restrained energy, yet with a musical cadence. The thought is often only half expressed; one feels the speaker has essayed a thing beyond words, and has suddenly discovered the impotence of language, and broken off with the sentence unfinished. There is the fascination of true poetry about these earliest soorahs; as we read them we understand the enthusiasm of the Prophet’s followers, though we cannot fully realize the beauty and the power.”6

The Fātiḥah

It will be seen from these two quotations that even Western writers