into numerous tribes, who were engaged in a perpetual warfare against each other, the Arabs, and with them their various dialects, would more and more have drifted asunder, poetry would have followed in the wake, and the population of Arabia would have broken up into a multitude of clans, with their particular bards, whose love-and-war songs enterprising travellers of our day might now collect … It seems, then, that it is only a work of the nature of the Holy Qur’ān which could develop ancient Arabic into a literary language … But not only by raising a dialect, through its generalization, to the power of a language, and by rendering the adoption of writing indispensable, has the Holy Qur’ān initiated the development of an Arabic literature; its composition itself has contributed two factors absolutely needful to this development: it has added to the existing poetry the origins of rhetoric and prose … But Muḥammad made a still greater and more decisive step towards creating a literature for his people. In those surahs, in which he regulated the private and public life of the Muslim, he originated a prose, which has remained the standard of classical purity ever since”.45

There are other considerations which entitle the Holy Qur’ān to a place of eminence to which no other book can aspire. It throws light on all the fundamentals of religion,46 the existence and unity of God, the reward of good and evil, the life after death, paradise and hell, revelation, etc. In addition to expounding to us the mysteries of the unseen, it offers a solution of the most difficult problems of this life, such as the distribution of wealth, the sex-problem, and all other questions on which depends in any degree the happiness and advancement of man. And the value of this copiousness of ideas is further enhanced when it is seen that it does not confront man with dogmas but gives reasons for every assertion made, whether relating to the spiritual or the physical life. There are hundreds of topics on which it has enriched the literature of the world, and whether it discusses questions relating to spiritual existence or to physical life here on earth, it adopts a rational approach and convinces by argument and not by dogma.

More wonderful still is the effect which the Holy Qur’ān has produced. The transformation it brought about is unparalleled in the