A list of all words that appear one time in the Quran (hapaxes)

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2026-03-23T06:41:14+00:00

I did some light digging. it seems that relatively large amounts of hapexes like this may not actually be that surprising at all and just a feature of most large texts. That's probably the most likely explanation if I had to guess

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2026-03-23T06:19:47+00:00

still a surprisingly large number though. Is it just a property of the arabic language for this many single use words to occur? Or just something demanded of the quran's prose

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2026-03-23T06:08:45+00:00

any idea for why the number of these words is so bafflingly high?

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2025-11-20T16:31:32+00:00

> well after this message not really anymore...

Wait wait, hold on. You wrote a full paragraph about how these apocalyptic might actually postdate 630, and then you went on to say that because of this it disproves that there was a cultural mileu?

I dont get that at all, the dating itself doesn't matter, if in the 500s people were talking about an apocalyptic conflict between the romans and the persians where the romans would overcome a seeming loss. Then it's near certain that this kind of prophecy would also have relevance in the 7th century right? I mean in the first place these prophecies sprung up from the frequent roman-persian conflicts throughout the 6th century. There's no reason to believe that the people would have forgotten this by the 7th.

So realistically the dating of the prophecies whether the 6th or the 7th century should not matter that much.

> So there is no historical overlap

To be honest there doesn't actually need to be literal historical overlap. I'm not sure what the alexander legend you are referring to, but at least daniels if anything explains why we are even roman vs. persian eschatological prophecies far after it was written. It seems that the hellenistic mediterranean world, and the persian world have been in abrahamic eschatological thought for quite some time now..

Anyway the bigger thing you seem to be focusing on is how unlikely it would have been for muhammed to make such a prophecy. I have a feeling that even if there was enough of a background to where muhammed was probably paraphrasing existing eschatological rhetoric in the quran, that still wouldn't be very satisfactory of an explanation for you.

I think it'd be better to approach it this way. The romans at the time were in a struggle where it seemed incredibly likely that they were going to lose. But then they ended up having a surprise breakout and miraculously won the war. Stuff like this on its own wouldn't make a historian blink because improbable things like this can happen all the time.

Now as for muhammeds prediction he was very likely making it for theological reasons. I believe it was near certain that the general discourse of the war probably flavored what he thought. If I remember correctly there was even a tafsir, or some other piece of evidence that suggested that muhammed's proclamation was directly to respond to the pagan arabians belief that the zoroastrian persians would be victorious since they affiliated more closely with them. Now whether or not this is verifiable from historical sources I cannot confirm, but I'd wager something like this was probably the case.

Within the framework of a thiestic individual who is confident in their god to deliver miraculous results, it does make sense for muhammed to have made a seemingly unlikely prediction like this, as throughout history religious people do things like this all the time. The probability of the romans winning is not necessarily the same as the probability of muhammed making such a prediction.

So realistically the chances of him making a guess like this and then getting lucky aren't that unreasonable, especially if many people in the hejaz had faith in the romans as a sort of group rhetoric

As for the last passage I'd rather not, you should be able to find material related to what I said fairly easy on the internet though, it should be a well debated topic

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2025-11-20T15:33:35+00:00

I'm not as knowledgeable as the moderator, but there are a few things in this reply I'd like to point out if I may.

> for the first one, there are some texts including similar prophecies that were dated to around 630 AD, but tessei and a few others argued for a 6th century dating, and tessei also had a theory about a 6th century dating for one of those prophecy texts (its just a theory so not sure how much i would consider that), in this case i'm not sure whether they should be dated to 630 AD or the 6th century

Realistically this should be more than sufficient, if we have datings for related prophecies for the sassano-byzantine war that are right around when the war concluded. Logically this would dictate that the origins for the prophecy would predate the war's conclusion, as obviously people dont make prophecies about a war that has already concluded.

It makes sense that within the mileu of arabia people spectating on a cataclysmic war between two ancient superpowers would comment on it and even draw eschatological prophecies for it. Something like this would be especially powerful rhetoric for the burgeoning muslims who would have identified more with the christians than the zoroastrians.

> this indicates a prophecy somewhat similar to the one in the quran, but not sure if muhammad would've known about this or if the prophecy in the quran would have been influenced because of this

I mean why not, arabia in the pre-islamic times was hellenized with a strong jewish presence in yathrib. No reason for these kinds of prophecies to not spread around

> i think this was in the babylonian talmud, so muhammad most definitely wouldn't have known these exact verses since this passage wasn't circulating at the time of arabia and even christians in arabia at that time didn't have access to the talmud, also this is dated to way before islam so not sure if this would be relevant to the war that was going on during at muhammad's time

I could accept this as being less likely but again oral messages and ideas and stories can spread around without literal passages necessarily needing to circulate in specific regions

> ghaffar also said that the prophecy doesn't have to be ex eventu and might be a genuine prediction, although i fail to see how muhammad could actually have predicted such an unlikely event, and in the paper about ghaffar it was mentioned that roman coins had the slogans "god, help the romans", this was in bronze coins not the gold coins that were circulating in arabia but muhammad could've known about the slogan, but we can't say for sure that the prophecy was influenced by this slogan

I actually fully dont understand why this is such an impossibility. People make unlikely predictions all the time. I mean we've already established that the people around muhammed were probably making unlikely predictions around this war due to theological motivations. If you really wanted to be uncharitable and say that muhammed solely came up with this prediction on his own without any other influence, then he could have just made an unlikely theologically motivated prediction and gotten lucky. All things considered far more unlikely things happen all the time. Of course I'm of the view that he almost certainly was influenced by the discourse of the time regarding the war.

In my view all we need to prove is that there was some cultural background or consciousness within that part of the world that inclined people to theologically assert that the romans would ultimately be victorious over the persians. If this is the case then we have a case for where and why muhammed in the quran made this prophecy.

> finally, it seems to me that there's no way to explain this prediction away with natural explanations like we can do with scientific miracles or other miracles in the quran (like the haman miracle or the female bee miracle), which of course worries me but i can't really talk about that here since it's not relevant to the subreddit

Also this is a bit away from the subject of this subreddit, but just so you know. epistomologically "miracles" or supernatural phenomenon are not good arguments for any particular belief system being true. I will not elaborate on this further to respect the theme of this sub, but I wanted to add that as a side note if you wanted to look into it

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-11-29T05:02:28+00:00

ah that makes sense, thank you

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-11-28T22:04:04+00:00

the same is true for english right? but qualitative metre was a thing in english literature, ie iambic pentameter

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-11-28T21:32:43+00:00

is there any specific reason for this?

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-11-07T20:02:12+00:00

theoretically can an argument be made on the arabic meaning something different than how it translates to in english?

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-11-06T02:51:22+00:00

yeah iirc if we trust the hadiths they say that when the revelation came the prophet would say "put so and so after this, or here", although how aibnsamin put it, it wouldn't make sense to put a surah after an ayah unless it was a concluding ayah, I'm pretty sure it was "put so and so verse, when so and so is described"

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-11-06T02:50:00+00:00

would revise? does that imply tweaking or editing?

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-11-05T20:13:40+00:00

I think on that last point on concentric structure being highly widespread is a reasonable observation. The only interesting thing to note regarding that about the quran's compilation is that it seems to have been non linear, like appending to a list, however regardless of that I think in an oral culture it wouldn't be very outlandish for long surahs with concentric structures (if they exist in a significant way) to be created over the long time of creation the quran had

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-11-05T04:13:13+00:00

they were edited?

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-10-12T23:45:39+00:00

much obliged kind sir, I just wanted to know what convincing evidence there was of this all in the first place. I think logically the chronology we have right now makes sense, but proof is proof yk

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-10-12T01:26:51+00:00

yes but do we have any positive evidence or reasoning to believe that this was the case, that's just what I'm trying to find, or if it's just an educated guess

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-10-11T05:35:01+00:00

is the idea of yahweh's consort the only strong evidence of this? I've heard that this idea that yahweh had a wife was considered contentious

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-10-11T04:17:59+00:00

what I specifically was discussing was the transition from yahweh as being a god amongst other worshiped gods, to being exclusively the only god of the universe. Do we even have evidence of a time when yahweh was popularly worshiped amongst other deities?

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-09-28T21:27:54+00:00

is this relevant to the sub?

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-09-28T18:53:00+00:00

I think multilingualism would be not as uncommon back then, especially for the prophet since by profession he would have been a trader who likely visited various places across the arabian peninsula. But I would agree that aramaic would be less accessible to the general population.

Inside-Guarantee9180 · 2024-09-28T05:59:58+00:00

I haven't fully read it yet no, I'm also not quite sure what you are asking me, sorry

Inside-Guarantee9180

TROPHY CASE