From “What” Makes It Miraculous to “How” It Is Miraculous: The Qurʾān’s Methodological Revolution

Abstract

This article reinterprets the doctrine of iʿjāz al-Qurʾān (the inimitability of the Qurʾān) by shifting the question from what makes the Qurʾān miraculous to how it is miraculous. It argues that the Qurʾān’s primary miracle lies not merely in its content, i.e., its eloquence or correspondence with scientific truth, but in its method: the transformation of the very frameworks through which knowledge, reason, and revelation were understood. Using Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī’s tripartite epistemology of bayān (expressive reasoning), burhān (demonstrative reasoning), and ʿirfān (reflective reasoning) together with Gadamer’s “fusion of horizons,” the article argues that the Qurʾān can be read as fusing and transcending these three systems, uniting Arabic eloquence, Greek rationalism, and Persian–gnostic spirituality into a single, holistic discourse. Through close analysis of key passages, such as Abraham’s dialectical reasoning in Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ and the metaphysics of light in Āyat al-Nūr, the article shows how the Qurʾān integrates poetic language, rational argument, and mystical depth to create an epistemic design that addresses intellect, emotion, and spirit simultaneously. This synthesis allows the Qurʾān to be interpreted, within classical and later exegetical traditions, not only as a linguistic or theological miracle but as a paradigmatic reconfiguration of cognition: one that these traditions understood as teaching readers how to think, reflect, and awaken.

1. Methodology

This article adopts an interdisciplinary hermeneutic approach that integrates classical Qurʾānic exegesis (tafsīr), intellectual history, and epistemological analysis. Rather than viewing iʿjāz al-Qurʾān (the Qurʾān’s inimitability) as solely literary or apologetic, it situates the concept within the broader epistemic transformations of early Islamic thought. Drawing on both classical figures, such as ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 1078) and Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 1013), and modern frameworks like Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī (2009) and his typology of bayān, burhān, and ʿirfān, the article examines how the Qurʾān reconfigures the relationship between language, reason, and spiritual insight. Through this dual lens, the article argues that the Qurʾān can be read, within specific theological and hermeneutical frameworks, as both a theological revelation and a methodological revolution that redefines dominant intellectual systems.

Building on al-Jābirī’s epistemological model, the research compares bayānī (expressive reasoning), burhānī (demonstrative reasoning), and ʿirfānī (reflective reasoning) modes of knowing across pre-Islamic and early Islamic contexts to show how the Qurʾān converses with and transcends earlier paradigms. The article proposes reading the Qurʾān as a unifying epistemic text, using al-Jābirī’s typology as an analytical heuristic rather than as a historical description of the Qurʾān’s original epistemic environment, integrating eloquence, logic, and insight. Close readings of passages such as Abraham’s dialogue in Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ (21:51–70) and Āyat al-Nūr (24:35), interpreted through both classical and Sufi exegesis by Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 1074) and Aḥmad ibn ʿAjība al-Ḥasanī (d. 1809), demonstrate how the text performs its own synthesis of bayān, burhān, and ʿirfān. Supported by modern hermeneutical scholarship, this analysis reveals the Qurʾān’s miracle as residing not only in its message but in its method: its transformation of the very structures through which humanity perceives, reasons, and believes.

While al-Jābirī’s tripartite schema has itself been subject to substantial critique, particularly for its modern framing and its selective treatment of kalām and legal reasoning (al-Jābirī 1991), the present article does not adopt the typology as an exhaustive map of Islamic epistemology but as a heuristic device for illuminating one possible way of conceptualizing Qurʾānic discourse.

The article employs Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutical “fusion of horizons” and Ricoeur’s concept of “surplus of meaning” to illuminate the Qurʾān’s capacity to generate multiple, contextually renewed interpretations. Drawing on Truth and Method (Gadamer 1989, pp. 302–7), it situates Qurʾānic discourse as a dialogical event in which the divine word encounters the interpreter’s historical consciousness, allowing meaning to emerge through participation rather than detached analysis. This Gadamerian framework helps the author account for how many interpreters have understood the Qurʾān’s universality as residing in its capacity to speak simultaneously to varied intellectual and spiritual audiences. Complementing this, the article invokes Ricoeur’s Interpretation Theory (Ricoeur 1976, pp. 87–95) to argue that Qurʾānic language continually exceeds any single exegesis, producing an inexhaustible polysemy that reflects the infinite nature of divine speech. In combining these perspectives, the author shows that the Qurʾān’s inimitability (iʿjāz) operates not merely at the linguistic level but as a hermeneutic phenomenon: its words are structured to invite renewed understanding across generations. Thus, Gadamer’s dialogical hermeneutics and Ricoeur’s theory of meaning excess together ground the article’s claim that the Qurʾān’s miracle lies in its performative method of interpretation itself. These philosophical frameworks are employed analogically and selectively, and not as exhaustive accounts of divine intentionality.

Before we proceed, two things are worthy of mention. First, this use of philosophical hermeneutics remains in tension with theological claims about divine intentionality, since Gadamerian finitude does not easily accommodate revelation as absolute origin; a tension acknowledged rather than resolved here. Second, readers should note that the article moves between historical reconstruction, interpretive synthesis, and normative theological reflection; these shifts are intentional and are explicitly signposted where they occur.

2. Positionality

Approaching this topic from the position of a “Muslim theologian”, a standpoint in which normativity is especially explicit and deeply embedded, I am conscious of the potential tension this positioning may generate with respect to the “academic standing” of the present study. The presence of normative commitments in theological inquiry is often taken to compromise scholarly distance, particularly within disciplines that privilege descriptive or analytical modes of investigation. Yet I do not regard the distinction between normative or prescriptive approaches and descriptive ones as absolute or inherently irreconcilable. The presence of normativity does not, in itself, preclude analytical rigor, provided that its claims remain open to critical scrutiny.

If the embrace of “revisability” and “criticality” is commonly understood as marking the boundary between academic inquiry and theology, it does not follow that theological scholarship is necessarily incapable of meeting these criteria. As Thomas A. Lewis argues in Theology and Religious Studies in Higher Education (Lewis 2009), the practice of “critical normativity”, when paired with a genuine commitment to revisability, challenges the widespread assumption that theologically oriented inquiry cannot sustain the critical distance expected of academic research (Lewis 2009, pp. 87–98). In a similar vein, Kevin Schilbrack contends in Philosophy and the Study of Religions (Schilbrack 2014) that the decisive criterion for academic legitimacy is not the absence of value commitments, which are in any case unavoidable, but whether those commitments remain open to scrutiny and critique (Schilbrack 2014, p. 192).

With this in mind, this article operates as a work of critical and reflexive theology rather than historical-critical Islamology. Its aim is not to establish the Qurʾān’s miraculousness as an objective fact, but to analyse how particular exegetical, philosophical, and mystical traditions have understood and theorised iʿjāz. Normative claims, where present, are acknowledged as situated within these traditions and remain open to critical scrutiny.

3. Classical Formation of Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān

Al-Walīd ibn al-Mughīra (d. 622 CE), an elder of Quraysh and one of the Prophet Muḥammad’s contemporaries, offered one of the earliest recorded testimonies to the Qurʾān’s extraordinary eloquence, describing it as “a sweetness and beauty that none can rival” (Badr al-Dīn al-Zarkashī 2006, p. 390, al-Burhān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān). Such early impressions are manifestations of what later scholars would describe as a perceived linguistic transcendence that long preceded systematic theology. This early aesthetic awe, emerging in the first decade of revelation, shows that the Qurʾān’s initial impact was experiential and rhetorical rather than analytical, providing the foundation for later intellectual elaborations of iʿjāz al-Qurʾān (the inimitability of the Qurʾān).

ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī transformed this intuitive admiration into a coherent linguistic theory. In Dalāʾil al-Iʿjāz (Proofs of Inimitability) and Asrār al-Balāghah (Secrets of Eloquence), he argued that the Qurʾān’s uniqueness lies in the syntactic and semantic harmony of naẓm (the composition and relational structure of words) (al-Jurjānī n.d., Dalāʾil al-Iʿjāz). Mustansir Mir notes that this marked the full intellectualization of Qurʾānic eloquence, shifting its analysis from aesthetic impression to systematic reasoning (Mir 1986, pp. 10–25, Coherence in the Qurʾān). Developed in 11th-century Nishapur, his work helped define balāghah (rhetoric) as both a linguistic and theological science.

The Qurʾānic challenge, “Let them produce a discourse like it” (Q. 52:33–34), provided the scriptural basis for the doctrine of iʿjāz. Ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 923 CE) interpreted these verses as proof of the Qurʾān’s divine authorship, establishing eloquence as prophetic evidence (al-Ṭabarī 1994, vol. 27, p. 47, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān ʿan Taʾwīl Āy al-Qurʾān). Josef van Ess traces the formal development of iʿjāz to the 9th–10th centuries CE, when debates about divine speech (kalām Allāh) intensified, particularly during the Mihna (Inquisition) under Caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 813–833 CE) (van Ess 2017, vol. 1, pp. 38–45, Theology and Society). What began as a rhetorical provocation during Muḥammad’s lifetime thus evolved into a central theological principle by the Abbasid era.

The 9th–11th centuries CE formed the intellectual backdrop for mature iʿjāz theory. ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Hamadhānī (d. 1025 CE) in his al-Mughnī fī Abwāb al-Tawḥīd wa’l-ʿAdl (The Comprehensive Book on the Principles of Divine Unity and Justice) and Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 1013 CE) in his Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān (The Inimitability of the Qurʾān) refined the argument that the Qurʾān’s eloquence constitutes a rationally demonstrable miracle. Working within the rationalist currents of Abbasid Baghdad, they bridged kalām theology with linguistic precision, presenting revelation as an intelligible miracle rather than a mystical abstraction. This synthesis anchored divine truth in the very structures of human speech.

The Shuʿūbīyah movement (8th–10th centuries CE), which arose under the Abbasid Caliphate (established 750 CE), added a profound sociocultural dimension to the doctrine of iʿjāz al-Qurʾān. Deriving its name from the Qurʾānic term shuʿūb (“nations” or “peoples,” Q. 49:13), it represented a broad intellectual current among non-Arab Muslims, especially Persians, but also Syrians, Berbers, and others, who resisted Arab claims to cultural and linguistic supremacy within the Islamic empire. The movement was not anti-Islamic but rather a call for cultural parity, asserting that virtue and intellect were not the monopoly of Arabs. Through literature, poetry, and polemical essays, Shuʿūbī thinkers challenged the idea that Arabic alone conferred divine favour or civilizational superiority, arguing that Islam’s universality transcended ethnic and linguistic boundaries. In response, Arab scholars and theologians, anxious to preserve the sanctity of Arabic as the language of revelation, elevated its defence to a doctrinal level. As Tarif Khalidi notes, this contest made the defence of Qurʾānic Arabic a matter of faith itself (Khalidi 1994, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period). Thus, iʿjāz came to embody both theological conviction and cultural identity, transforming from a purely linguistic proof of divine revelation into a declaration of Arab-Islamic legitimacy. In many polemical and theological contexts, Arabic was increasingly presented as inimitable, a move that functioned, among other things, as a response to Shuʿūbī assertions of equality and reasserted the Qurʾān’s eloquence as evidence of divine election, making language not only a vehicle of revelation but also a symbol of civilization itself.

Interreligious debates during the 8th–9th centuries also shaped the doctrine’s articulation. Christian Arab theologians such as Abū Rāʾita al-Takrītī (fl. c. 830 CE) and ʿAmmār ibn Mātā al-Baṣrī (d. c. 850 CE) upheld Christ’s miracles as proofs of divinity (Thomas 2023, Christian–Muslim Relations: Primary Sources 600–1914). Muslim theologians countered that Muḥammad’s enduring miracle was the Qurʾān itself; a miracle of language rather than transient wonder. This reframing rendered revelation a perpetual miracle accessible through human communication. Through this shift, Muslims articulated a uniquely rational and textual form of miraculousness.

By the early 11th century, al-Bāqillānī’s theory of prophetic typology completed this intellectual trajectory. He proposed that each prophet’s miracle reflected the prevailing knowledge of his era: magic for Moses (13th century BCE), healing for Jesus (1st century CE), and eloquence for Muḥammad (7th century CE) (al-Bāqillānī n.d., Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān; al-Zarkashī 2006, p. 387, al-Burhān). Language thus became the divinely chosen medium of proof. Across four centuries, from Muḥammad ibn Hishām’s Sīrah (8th century CE) to al-Bāqillānī’s systematic theology (11th century CE), the doctrine of iʿjāz al-Qurʾān matured into one of Islam’s most sophisticated epistemological foundations, affirming that divine revelation manifests its truth through the very possibilities of human language.

In recent scholarship, Nicolai Sinai’s historical-critical approach has illuminated the Qurʾān’s textual development, intertextuality, and literary coherence, situating its linguistic distinctiveness within the broader Late Antique milieu of scriptural and poetic traditions (Sinai 2017, The Qurʾan). Angelika Neuwirth likewise reads the Qurʾān as a Late Antique text that intertwines Hebrew–Christian liturgical traditions, Hellenic rhetoric, and Arabic poetic structures, reframing the question of inimitability as a literary-historical rather than purely theological issue (Neuwirth 2014, Scripture, Poetry and the Making of a Community). Walid A. Saleh’s study of the formation of the classical tafsīr tradition shows how exegetical engagement with the Qurʾān’s rhetorical novelty was integrated into evolving hermeneutical systems of meaning and authority (Saleh 2004, The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition). Johanna Pink’s work on modern Qurʾānic interpretation and translation shifts attention from pre-modern conceptions of rhetorical inimitability to the negotiation of the Qurʾān’s linguistic status within global, multilingual, and media-rich contexts (Pink 2019, Muslim Qurʾānic Interpretation Today). Together, these scholars reveal how the doctrine of Qurʾānic eloquence is embedded in networks of text-history, rhetoric, exegesis, and modern reception.

4. Modern Reconfiguration of Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān

The second major approach, following the classical linguistic explanation of the Qurʾān’s inimitability, is what came to be known as the scientific miracles (al-iʿjāz al-ʿilmī). This modern hermeneutical and largely apologetic movement argues that the Qurʾānic text contains allusions to natural phenomena and scientific realities that were unknown to its seventh-century audience, thereby reaffirming its divine origin. As Nidhal Guessoum explains, this genre of tafsīr ʿilmī emerged in response to the intellectual challenge of modern science, functioning as a new mode of proving the Qurʾān’s divinity through empirical correspondence (Guessoum 2011, Islam’s Quantum Question). While classical scholars such as al-Jurjānī located the Qurʾān’s miracle in its syntactic order and semantic harmony, modern proponents of scientific tafsīr shift the focus from linguistic perfection to the correspondence between revelation and observable reality.

A key representative of this movement is Mustafa Mahmoud (1921–2009), an Egyptian physician and essayist, whose influential work Al-Qurʾān: Muhāwala li Fahm ʿAsrī (The Qurʾān: An Attempt at a Modern Reading, 1999) attempts to reconcile modern scientific discovery with Qurʾānic cosmology. Mahmoud contends that the Qurʾān’s verses on creation, life, and the cosmos embody latent scientific truths that only recent discoveries have made comprehensible. While insisting that the Qurʾān is not a scientific manual, Mahmoud argues that it points toward the laws of nature in a manner beyond the capacity of a 7th-century human author, thus reaffirming its divine authorship. His method is both reflective and apologetic: by showing harmony between revelation and empiricism, he portrays the Qurʾān as a timeless guide compatible with modern rationality.

Complementing Mahmoud’s philosophical style, Zaghloul El-Najjar (1933–2025), a distinguished Egyptian geologist and scholar, represents the more systematic and technical stream of iʿjāz ʿilmī. In works such as Tafsīr al-Āyāt al-Kawniyyah fī al-Qurʾān al-Karīm (Interpretation of the Cosmic Verses in the Holy Qurʾān, 2007), El-Najjar correlates Qurʾānic verses about the natural world, cosmology, geology, embryology, and biology, with established scientific findings. He classifies verses into those concerning worship and those concerning the universe, interpreting the latter as divine signs (āyāt kawniyyah) that anticipate later human discoveries. This, he argues, constitutes a rational and empirical dimension of iʿjāz, since the Qurʾān’s knowledge of natural law cannot be ascribed to its human milieu.

Together, Mahmoud and El-Najjar extend the scope of the Qurʾān’s miraculous nature from eloquence to existence itself. Mahmoud does so through a philosophical and popular lens, emphasizing existential harmony between revelation and science, while El-Najjar grounds his case in disciplinary expertise, showing how Qurʾānic statements correspond to geological and cosmological facts. As Guessoum notes, this trend seeks to make the Qurʾān scientifically self-evident, positioning modern science as a confirmation of revelation (Guessoum 2011, p. 167, Islam’s Quantum Question). Their shared project thus aims to demonstrate that the Qurʾān’s inimitability transcends linguistic and rhetorical realms, reaching into the very structure of creation.

Critics of the scientific tafsīr approach caution against reading modern scientific theories into a seventh-century text. Maurice Bucaille, an early and influential advocate of this trend, argued in La Bible, le Coran et la Science (Bucaille 1976) that the Qurʾān contains statements remarkably consistent with modern science, though he warned that careless correlations or speculative claims could invite anachronism and weaken the apologetic force of such readings. El-Najjar similarly acknowledges that exegesis should rest only on well-established facts, not hypotheses, and that speculative interpretations fall within the domain of the unseen (ghayb) rather than empirical science (El-Najjar, “The Scientific Connotations in the Holy Qurʾān,” 2012). Other modern scholars, such as Guessoum, emphasize that the Qurʾān’s primary purpose is moral and spiritual guidance, not the exposition of physical laws, even if its insights may harmonize with aspects of empirical truth (Guessoum 2011, pp. 63–80, Islam’s Quantum Question).

Ultimately, the iʿjāz ʿilmī movement, as developed by Mahmoud and El-Najjar, redefines the Qurʾān’s miracle for the scientific age. By framing divine revelation as compatible with and even anticipatory of modern discoveries, they revive the doctrine of inimitability in empirical form. The Qurʾān’s challenge, “Let them produce a discourse like it” (Q. 52:34), is thus reinterpreted to encompass not only rhetorical mastery but also the correspondence of revelation with the structure of the natural universe. This approach reflects the continued vitality of the Qurʾān’s miracle in new epistemic contexts, showing that its iʿjāz is not static but responsive to humanity’s expanding horizons of knowledge.

5. Limits of Classical and Modern Approaches to Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān

Both the classical linguistic and modern scientific approaches to the Qurʾān’s miraculousness, while valuable, reveal inherent limitations in their explanatory scope. From the perspective advanced in this article, a central limitation of both approaches lies in their tendency to assume that the Qurʾān’s miraculousness can be fully captured within pre-existing frameworks of understanding rather than interrogating the text’s capacity to disrupt conventional epistemologies. The linguistic approach, exemplified by al-Jurjānī in Dalāʾil al-Iʿjāz, interprets the Qurʾān’s inimitability through Arabic rhetorical norms, emphasizing the syntactic and semantic coherence of naẓm. While this systematization transformed intuitive admiration into structured analysis, it inherently evaluates the Qurʾān against the standards of human eloquence, thus limiting the recognition of its radical innovation beyond established literary norms.

The linguistic paradigm also demonstrates a defensive posture. By framing the Qurʾān’s miracle in relation to Arabic rhetorical excellence, scholars effectively sought to validate the text against internal critiques of eloquence, rather than exploring how the Qurʾān might unsettle conventional assumptions about language itself. Hence, Muslim intellectual history has often prioritized demonstrating compatibility over recognizing the Qurʾān’s capacity to redefine epistemic categories (Hourani 1985, p. 23, Reason and Tradition in Islamic Ethics). Consequently, the linguistic approach clarifies how the Qurʾān is eloquent without fully addressing why its mode of expression constitutes a unique form of epistemic intervention.

Similarly, the scientific-tafsīr approach, represented by Mahmoud and El-Najjar, attempts to demonstrate divine authorship through correspondence with modern science. Both align Qurʾānic statements about cosmology, biology, and geology with empirical discoveries, portraying the Qurʾān as anticipating scientific knowledge. While intellectually compelling, this method presumes that Western scientific paradigms provide the definitive measure for miraculousness. In effect, it shifts the miracle from linguistic artistry to empirical correspondence, yet does so within the constraining parameters of modern science, limiting the recognition of the Qurʾān’s originality in generating modes of understanding.

Both approaches share a defensive orientation: the linguistic scholars safeguard the Qurʾān against critiques of eloquence, and the scientific interpreters defend its relevance in the modern, empirical age. In both cases, the miracle is framed relative to external standards, Arabic rhetoric or contemporary science, rather than as an internally transformative epistemic event. This orientation risks reducing the Qurʾān’s inimitability to a matter of fitting or exceeding human norms rather than demonstrating a distinct way of conveying divine knowledge.

Critically, both approaches risk either anachronism or reductionism. Linguistic theory measures the Qurʾān against human rhetorical conventions, while scientific tafsīr largely retrojects contemporary empirical knowledge into a pre-scientific text. As Guessoum notes, this can create the illusion of confirmation without addressing the Qurʾān’s deeper epistemic originality (Guessoum 2011, p. 167, Islam’s Quantum Question). In both cases, the miracle is largely demonstrated defensively, proving superiority relative to a familiar standard rather than engaging with the Qurʾān’s capacity to redefine standards themselves.

Finally, the limitations of these two approaches suggest the need for a more reflexive hermeneutic. By relying on external frameworks, linguistic excellence or modern science, both strategies understate the Qurʾān’s capacity to generate its own epistemic norms. Understanding the Qurʾān’s miracle requires recognizing that its inimitability is dynamic and responsive, not simply a matter of literary skill or empirical foresight. The Qurʾān’s miracle, therefore, cannot be fully captured by situating it within defensive paradigms; it demands an approach attentive to how revelation itself transforms the conditions and criteria of knowledge.

Recent discussions of Qurʾānic authority grounded in scientific concordism, most prominently associated with Maurice Bucaille, help clarify by contrast the distinctiveness of the approach advanced here. As Malik and Moran show in their detailed reconstruction of Bucaille’s engagement with evolution, Bucailleism locates the Qurʾān’s exceptional status in its anticipatory alignment with modern scientific knowledge, particularly in areas such as cosmology, embryology, and human origins (Malik and Moran 2023). While historically influential, this strategy remains fundamentally content-driven: the Qurʾān’s significance is tied to the presumed correctness or prescience of particular propositional claims when measured against external epistemic authorities. By contrast, the present article argues that iʿjāz is more fruitfully understood not as a catalogue of superior statements about the natural world but as a transformation in the conditions of intelligibility themselves; an intervention into how meaning, inference, persuasion, and knowledge are generated and authorised. From this perspective, the limits of Bucaillism are instructive rather than incidental: its vulnerability to shifts in scientific consensus underscores the fragility of grounding Qurʾānic authority in empirical verification, whereas classical and post-classical reflections on iʿjāz locate the Qurʾān’s force at the level of method, address, and epistemic reorientation. Engaging Bucaille in this way thus sharpens the central claim of this article by showing that even sophisticated modern defences of the Qurʾān can remain confined within a framework of evidentiary comparison, precisely the framework that earlier theories of iʿjāz sought to unsettle.

6. From Content to Method

Both the classical linguistic and modern scientific approaches to iʿjāz al-Qurʾān have focused primarily on the content of the Qurʾān; its eloquence, structure, and references to natural phenomena. The focus of this article, by contrast, is on its method: how the Qurʾān can be interpreted as reconfiguring prevailing frameworks of knowing that structured pre-Islamic and early intellectual life. While earlier scholars sought to show what makes the Qurʾān miraculous, how it transformed the ways humans come to know, think, and interpret the world has barely been explored. To highlight this transformation, I turn to al-Jābirī’s triadic typology of bayān (expressive reasoning), ʿirfān (reflective reasoning) and burhān (demonstrative reasoning). Although al-Jābirī did not frame this model within discussions of the Qurʾān’s miraculous nature, it offers a powerful analytical lens through which the Qurʾān’s epistemic revolution, its reordering of knowledge itself, can be understood.

Bayān refers to the Arabic system of knowledge grounded in eloquence, analogy, and textual reasoning. It privileges the mastery of language as the principal means of understanding reality and constructing meaning. Rooted in the Arab tradition of orality, poetry, and rhetoric, bayān values clarity, balance, and linguistic harmony as expressions of truth. As al-Jābirī explains in Bunyat al-ʿAql al-ʿArabī (The Structure of Arab Reason, 1986), bayānī thought operated through interpretation and comparison, relying on linguistic precedent (qiyās) and inherited convention (sunnat al-ʿArab). Classical Qurʾānic scholars such as al-Jurjānī in Dalāʾil al-Iʿjāz and al-Bāqillānī in Iʿjāz al-Qurʾān exemplified this mode: they demonstrated the Qurʾān’s inimitability through its unparalleled syntactic and semantic harmony, seeing in its language the ultimate perfection of bayānī expression.

ʿIrfān, by contrast, designates the Persian and Gnostic system of intuitive knowledge, founded on inner illumination, esoteric insight, and spiritual unveiling. It privileges direct experiential awareness (maʿrifah) over discursive reasoning, and sees truth as something unveiled to the purified heart rather than deduced by the rational mind. Al-Jābirī associates ʿirfān with mystical traditions that sought union with the divine through contemplation and asceticism. Knowledge here is inward, symbolic, and holistic, perceived through metaphysical participation rather than analytical argument. Later Sufi interpreters such as al-Ghazālī (d. 1111 CE) and Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240 CE) would develop this epistemology further, emphasizing that divine truths transcend the grasp of reason alone and must be realized through spiritual unveiling (kashf).

Burhān represents the Greek and later Aristotelian system of demonstrative proof, grounded in logic, syllogism, and empirical observation. It seeks certainty through causal reasoning and verifiable evidence. As al-Jābirī notes, burhānī thought entered the Islamic world through translations of Greek philosophy during the Abbasid period, shaping disciplines such as logic (manṭiq), medicine, astronomy, and metaphysics. The hallmark of burhān is its pursuit of universal truths derived from rational necessity. Modern scientific tafsīr, such as that of Mahmoud and El-Najjar, somehow exemplify this mode by attempting to demonstrate the Qurʾān’s miraculousness through its agreement with the findings of empirical science.

What is analytically noteworthy, however, is that many interpreters have read the Qurʾān as not belonging exclusively to any one of these epistemic systems; it integrates and transcends them all. The Qurʾānic discourse employs the expressive clarity of bayān, the rational depth of burhān, and the spiritual insight of ʿirfān, combining them into a single, coherent methodology of knowing. Its verses appeal to the mind, “Will they not reason?” (Q. 36:68), while awakening the heart, “Indeed, in that are signs for those who reflect” (Q. 13:3), and enchanting the ear with unparalleled eloquence. This fusion has been interpreted as transforming knowledge from a compartmentalized enterprise into a holistic act that unites intellect, intuition, and revelation. Within these interpretive traditions, the Qurʾān thus is presented as restructuring cognition itself, redefining what it means to know, to think, and to believe. Through this synthesis, the Qurʾān can be read as reconfiguring relationships between different modes of knowledge. Where bayān privileges analogy and linguistic convention, the Qurʾān grounds meaning in reflection upon the signs (āyāt) of creation. Where burhān pursues demonstrative proof, the Qurʾān links certainty (yaqīn) not only to logic but to moral awareness and spiritual perception. And where ʿirfān retreats into esoteric inwardness, the Qurʾān democratizes intuition, calling every person, not only mystics, to perceive divine wisdom in the world and in the self: “We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth” (Q. 41:53).

Seen through this interpretive lens, the Qurʾān’s iʿjāz is not confined to its linguistic mastery or scientific foresight but lies in its epistemic revolution, its creation of a new way of knowing that unites reason, revelation, and intuition. Both classical and modern interpreters, by focusing on content, overlooked how the Qurʾān transformed method. The linguistic scholars confined its miracle to the perfection of bayān, and the scientific exegetes to the truth of burhān. Yet the Qurʾān’s originality may be located in its ability to make these systems converse, transforming each into a vessel for divine knowledge.

Thus, when viewed through this lens, the Qurʾān emerges not simply as an object of analysis but as a discourse that speaks to every epistemic tradition. Its miracle is not only theological but primarily methodological: it unites the grammarian’s reason, the philosopher’s logic, and the mystic’s intuition into a single horizon of understanding. This is what makes the Qurʾān particularly relevant; it does not merely inhabit the intellectual paradigms of its age but reshapes them, offering humanity a comprehensive vision of knowledge where the act of knowing itself becomes an act of revelation.

Yet, the Qurʾān’s rationalism is not abstract or Aristotelian. It is experiential and participatory, rooted in the rhythms of nature and the moral life of the believer. The Qurʾān begins from the empirical, rain descending, night and day alternating, seeds germinating, and ascends toward the metaphysical, constructing from the observable world a moral and theological syllogism. Through this method, the act of reasoning becomes an act of worship, and reflection (iʿtibār) becomes a path to divine awareness. This democratization of intellect ensures that every human being, regardless of education, can engage with divine wisdom through contemplation of the signs (āyāt) in both scripture and creation.

In this integration of burhān within a culture once defined by bayān, the Qurʾān achieves what can be called an epistemic renewal: a balance between rational inquiry and spiritual devotion. The Qurʾān neither elevates reason above revelation nor subordinates reason to blind faith; instead, it creates a dialogue between intellect and inspiration. This Qurʾānic invitation to thought and debate gave rise to the kalām tradition and, eventually, the rational sciences of the Islamic Golden Age. The Qurʾān thus frames intellectual activity itself as a form of worship, grounding faith in reflective awareness.

Through this union of reason and revelation, the Qurʾān produced a rational religiosity, distinct from pre-Islamic thought. Its moral commands are not arbitrary decrees but rationally framed principles tied to justice, consequence, and communal welfare. The believer is called to obey and to understand, to see how divine law aligns with human well-being. This moral rationality invites comparison with later philosophical ethics, connecting divine wisdom with human benefit and coherence. The Qurʾān’s ethical system mirrors its linguistic inclusivity: it appeals simultaneously to conscience, intellect, and emotion, uniting the moral, cognitive, and affective dimensions of the human being.

This synthesis of rational and moral reflection underscores the Qurʾān’s enduring philosophical relevance. While later philosophers such as Immanuel Kant (d. 1804) sought to delineate the limits of reason, the Qurʾān expands them, anchoring rational inquiry in metaphysical reality. It engages the finite intellect without exhausting the infinite truth, framing accountability of thought within a theocentric worldview. Thus, Qurʾānic rationalism is not mere logic; it is a path to ḥikmah (wisdom), a disciplined harmony between reflection, faith, and moral awareness.

In reweaving burhān into a bayān-dominated culture, the Qurʾān revolutionized cognition as profoundly as it redefined theology. Its arguments, parables, and meditations form a self-renewing epistemic method that invites continual discovery. Revelation becomes not a static text but a living dialogue between divine word and human understanding: each reader engaging it according to their capacity yet being called to ascend toward greater insight. Through this synthesis of rhetoric, reason, and revelation, the Qurʾān reveals what this article treats as its most conceptually significant feature: a discourse that simultaneously speaks to the mind, heart, and soul, addressing philosophical, mystical, and poetic modes of reception within diverse audiences. Its inimitability thus lies not merely in eloquence or content but in its epistemic design; a divine method that transforms how humanity thinks, feels, and knows.

Having said that, this argument does not claim that the Qurʾān historically fused discrete epistemic systems in their fully developed forms, but that later intellectual traditions retrospectively recognized in Qurʾānic discourse a capacity to resonate with, and integrate, multiple modes of knowing

7. Qurʾānic Eloquence and Multi-Level Address

The Qurʾān’s methodological synthesis of bayān, ʿirfān, and burhān explains its linguistic and rhetorical ability to engage multiple audiences simultaneously. This capacity is not merely stylistic but reflects the very epistemic revolution described earlier; the unification of distinct modes of knowing into a single communicative act. Because the Qurʾān integrates reason, intuition, and expression, it can address minds and hearts across every level of human understanding. In contrast to ordinary human speech, Qurʾānic discourse is frequently described in the exegetical tradition as sustaining a form of universality that transcends the bounds of education, culture, and intellectual sophistication. The same verse can enlighten the philosopher, move the poet, and humble the believer, each receiving from it according to their measure of insight.

Classical Arabic thought captured this communicative dynamic through the distinction between khiṭāb al-ʿāmmah (the address to the general public) and khiṭāb al-khāṣṣah (the address to the elite); a distinction articulated by philosophers such as al-Fārābī (d. 950) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 1198), and reinterpreted in modern Qurʾānic hermeneutics by Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (d. 2010), in Mafhūm al-Naṣṣ (The Concept of the Text, 1990), and Arkoun (2010), in Lectures du Coran (Arkoun 1982). While human eloquence tends to succeed in one register at the expense of the other, the Qurʾān transcends this dichotomy, addressing both lay and learned audiences through a discourse whose meanings unfold across intellectual and spiritual horizons. In Hans-Georg Gadamer’s (d. 2002) terms, this exemplifies a “fusion of horizons” (Gadamer 1989, Truth and Method), wherein the divine address meets the interpreter’s historical consciousness in a dialogical act of understanding. Likewise, Paul Ricoeur’s (d. 2005) notion of a “surplus of meaning” (Ricoeur 1976, Interpretation Theory) illuminates how Qurʾānic language generates layered significations accessible to each reader according to their capacity. Contemporary Qurʾānic scholars such as Campanini ([2011] 2020), in The Qurʾan: Modern Muslim Interpretations (Campanini [2011] 2020), and Abu Zayd (2004), in Rethinking the Qurʾān, have explicitly drawn on Gadamerian and Ricoeurian hermeneutics to explain this polyvalence of meaning. This universality also resonates with al-Jābirī and his epistemological triad, through which the Qurʾān’s discourse may be seen as uniting linguistic eloquence, rational reflection, and spiritual depth within a single, inclusive mode of address.

This layered communicative power flows from what can be called balāghah ilāhiyyah, divinely measured eloquence. Every utterance in the Qurʾān is calibrated not only to the intellect but to the emotional and spiritual state of its recipients. Where human discourse stratifies its audience, the Qurʾān integrates them, ensuring that the same words offer guidance to the unlearned and contemplation to the wise. It testifies to this itself: “We have indeed made the Qurʾān easy for remembrance, so is there any who will take heed?” (Q. 54:17). The Qurʾān’s linguistic accessibility conceals infinite depths of reflection, ensuring that its surface simplicity never exhausts its inner meanings.

Yet this universality is not only intellectual; it is also moral and spiritual. The Qurʾān does not merely inform; it transforms. It convinces the mind (iqnāʿ al-ʿaql) and moves the heart (imtiʿāʿ al-ʿāṭifah), uniting the rational and affective faculties in what some rhetoricians describe as al-bayān al-tām, the complete expression. As Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Derāz (d. 1958) observes in al-Nabaʾ al-ʿAẓīm (The Great News, 1985, pp. 113–16), the Qurʾān’s inimitability lies not merely in its linguistic form but in its power to harmonize logic, emotion, and spirituality within a single act of address; it reasons with the intellect even as it kindles the heart. Through this synthesis, the Qurʾān nourishes both the analytic and the aesthetic dimensions of human experience. It engages the intellect through argument and analogy, the imagination through imagery and rhythm, and the soul through invocation and remembrance.

This harmony also explains what human eloquence cannot achieve. Philosophers tend to speak to the intellect and neglect the heart; poets stir the emotions but often lack the rigor of truth. The Qurʾān integrates what human speech divides: it is both philosophy and poetry, reason and revelation. Its verses blend logical precision with emotional resonance, balancing burhānī argumentation with ʿirfānī intuition and bayānī beauty. In this lies its power to appeal to the full spectrum of human consciousness.

The Qurʾān’s rhetorical inclusivity also has profound social and ethical implications. Because its language addresses all strata of society without exclusion, it unites people through shared meaning while individualizing comprehension. Each listener receives from it what their understanding allows, yet all are equally addressed within the same divine speech. This universality mirrors the Qurʾān’s role as a manifestation of divine mercy (raḥmah): a single revelation that meets every human where they are, inviting all toward the same truth.

Ultimately, this ability to speak to many audiences at once is not only a literary miracle but a methodological and theological one. It reveals that the Qurʾān’s inimitability lies not just in its content or eloquence but in its epistemic inclusiveness: its capacity to embody simultaneously the clarity of bayān, the rational depth of burhān, and the spiritual resonance of ʿirfān. Within classical Islamic theology, such a capacity is characteristically attributed to divine speech. Again, within classical Islamic theology, this has often been identified as one of the clearest signs of iʿjāz: one revelation, infinitely refracted, that addresses every heart and mind according to its capacity, transforming method, meaning, and humanity itself.

8. Case Study 1: Reason as Revelation in the Abraham Narrative

Building on the Qurʾān’s fusion of rhetorical universality and epistemic transformation, one particularly illustrative example of how the text can be read as uniting bayān with burhān appears in its portrayal of Abraham in Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ (21:51–70). Here, the Qurʾān portrays Abraham, in contrast to some dominant Biblical emphases, not merely as a figure of unwavering faith who submits unconditionally to divine command, as the Biblical tradition often emphasizes, but as a reflective intellect, a prophet who teaches through inquiry, logic, and moral insight. In this account, Abraham becomes both believer and philosopher, prophet and pedagogue, guiding his people not through authority or force but through reasoned persuasion. The episode embodies the Qurʾān’s unique epistemic synthesis: a discourse where poetic eloquence and logical inquiry converge, demonstrating how divine revelation reconstitutes both language and thought.

The story opens with an affirmation of Abraham’s intellectual illumination: “And indeed We gave Abraham his guidance beforehand, and We knew him well” (21:51). The word rushdahu here signifies more than moral direction; it denotes an awakening of intellect, a capacity for discernment that aligns the mind with divine wisdom. Abraham’s first prophetic act is not a ritual gesture but a question: “What are these statues to which you are devoted?” (21:52). This inquiry models the Qurʾān’s rational pedagogy; it is disarming, reflective, and subversive all at once. By asking rather than asserting, Abraham invites his audience into self-examination, a process that exposes the incoherence of inherited custom. The method recalls what later philosophy would call the Socratic technique; the art of guiding interlocutors toward truth through questioning rather than instruction, a process Plato depicts as maieutic, or “intellectual midwifery” (Plato 1997, pp. 157–58, “Theaetetus,” in Complete Works).

The ensuing dialogue between Abraham and his people deepens this interplay of bayān and burhān. When his interlocutors justify idolatry by appealing to ancestral tradition, “We found our fathers worshipping them”, Abraham dismantles this reasoning with quiet irony and relentless logic: “Do they hear you when you call? Or do they benefit you or harm you?” (21:66–67). His questions are not accusatory but diagnostic; they reveal the emptiness of idolatry by subjecting it to rational scrutiny. The rhetorical climax comes when Abraham attributes the destruction of the idols to the largest among them, “Rather, this great one did it; ask them, if they can speak!” (21:63), forcing his audience to confront the absurdity of their own beliefs. The irony here is not mockery but method; it corresponds to what philosophers identify as the Socratic stage of elenchus, specifically Socratic irony: a strategic pose of feigned ignorance that exposes contradiction and awakens moral insight (Vlastos 1991, pp. 21–44, “Socratic Irony,” in Socratic Studies). In this sense, Abraham’s discourse enacts a Qurʾānic form of dialectic where burhān emerges from bayān; reason born through eloquence.

Through this scene, the Qurʾān does more than recount a story; it performs a pedagogy of thinking. The prophet’s reasoning becomes the reader’s lesson. Al-Ghazālī famously argued that philosophical reasoning has prophetic origins (al-Ghazālī 1962, p. 158, al-Munqiḏ min al-ḍalāl), and the Abraham narrative exemplifies this claim: it demonstrates that rational inquiry, far from being external to revelation, is its natural outgrowth. The Qurʾān presents Abraham as the archetype of the reflective believer; his faith is not opposed to intellect but animated by it. In his dialogue, revelation assumes the form of logic, and logic becomes a vessel for revelation.

This integration of reason and rhetoric also dismantles the classical opposition between poetry and philosophy. In pre-Islamic and later intellectual traditions, poetic language was associated with emotion and imagination, while philosophy was confined to argument and proof. The Qurʾān fuses these dimensions, transforming poetic devices, rhythm, metaphor, and repetition, into vehicles of rational persuasion. The language that moves the heart also disciplines the mind. As the Abraham narrative shows, divine eloquence does not obscure logic but embodies it; beauty becomes the form through which truth is communicated.

At the heart of this synthesis lies the Qurʾān’s theology of naẓar; contemplative observation. The recurring imperative unẓur (“look,” “consider,” “reflect”) encapsulates the Qurʾān’s epistemic ethic: truth must be seen, pondered, and reasoned into belief. In Abraham’s story, this principle operates vividly. His questioning urges his people to “look” at their idols, to perceive critically what had long been accepted unexamined. By embedding naẓar within narrative, the Qurʾān universalizes reflection; it transforms reasoning into worship, contemplation into devotion. The act of thinking becomes a spiritual obligation, a means of faith rather than its negation.

Through this unification of bayān and burhān, the Qurʾān is understood within these exegetical traditions as achieving something that human discourse had not previously been thought capable of accomplishing, fusing poetic imagination with demonstrative reasoning in a seamless epistemic act. The same verse that delights the ear challenges and changes the intellect; the same story that stirs emotion sharpens understanding. In the dialogue of Abraham, revelation and reason meet not as rivals but as allies, each enhancing the other. What this episode demonstrates is not simply that the Qurʾān values reason, but that reasoning itself is embedded within narrative, irony, and affect, suggesting a model of rationality inseparable from rhetorical form.

9. Case Study 2: Bayān, Burhān, and ʿIrfān in Interpretations of Āyat al-Nūr

The Qurʾān’s integrative character reaches a particularly clear expression when the dimension of ʿirfān is added to those of bayān and burhān. This triadic harmony is beautifully encapsulated in the so-called “Verse of Light” (Āyat al-Nūr, Q. 24:35): “Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is as if there were a niche containing a lamp; the lamp enclosed in glass; the glass as it were a brilliant star, lit from a blessed tree, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil would almost glow forth even if no fire touched it; Light upon Light. Allah guides to His Light whom He wills.” This verse has been read, particularly within Sufi and philosophical exegesis, as exceeding mere poetic ornament or philosophical analogy, particularly within Sufi and philosophical exegetical traditions. It is both image and argument, symbol and syllogism, uniting the emotive force of language, the clarity of reason, and the depth of mystical perception.

Al-Ghazālī, in his Mishkāt al-Anwār (The Niche of Lights, 1986), takes this verse as the cornerstone of a profound metaphysical and spiritual hermeneutic. For him, nūr (light) is not merely a metaphor for divine guidance but the very reality of existence itself, radiating from God as the ultimate source of being and knowledge. Each element of the parable, the niche, the lamp, the glass, and the oil, corresponds to layers of human consciousness and epistemic ascent. The niche is the human soul, the lamp is the intellect illuminated by revelation, the glass represents the purified heart reflecting divine truth, and the oil symbolizes innate disposition (fiṭrah), already inclined toward illumination even before revelation reaches it. In Ghazālī’s reading, Āyat al-Nūr is not just theological poetry; it is a map of spiritual cognition, a demonstration that reason and revelation converge in the inner luminosity of the believer’s heart.

This mystical interpretation does not negate burhān but fulfils it. Al-Ghazālī’s analysis begins with rational correspondence and culminates in spiritual realization. He accepts the demonstrative coherence of the verse, the metaphysical logic of divine causality, but moves beyond discursive thought to unveil its experiential truth. For him, burhān is the ladder, and ʿirfān is the vision from the summit. The intellect prepares the heart to receive divine light, and language, bayān, serves as the transparent medium through which that light shines. Thus, in Ghazālī’s system, the Qurʾān does not pit reason against mysticism; it reveals the former as the necessary path to the latter.

Later Sufi commentators such as Aḥmad ibn ʿAjība al-Ḥasanī (d. 1809) and Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 1074) expanded this insight, applying the principle of ʿirfān not only to Āyat al-Nūr but to the Qurʾān as a whole. In his Baḥr al-Madīd (The Vast Ocean, 1999), Ibn ʿAjība insists that every verse of the Qurʾān possesses both an outward (ẓāhir) and an inward (bāṭin) dimension, the first corresponding to bayān, the second to burhān, and the third to ʿirfān. Al-Qushayrī, in his Laṭāʾif al-Ishārāt (Subtle Hints of the Qurʾān, 2007), interprets the Qurʾān’s language as a living mirror of divine realities, where every linguistic form conceals a mystical kernel accessible only to the heart polished by remembrance (dhikr).

Through these interpretations, one perceives how the Qurʾān accommodates all three epistemic discourses, bayān, burhān, and ʿirfān, within its single, seamless mode of communication. Its eloquence captivates the senses; its reasoning convinces the mind; its symbolism awakens the soul. In Āyat al-Nūr, the divine word performs all three operations simultaneously: it speaks poetically, argues philosophically, and unveils mystically. The Qurʾān is thus interpreted, within these traditions, as articulating a comprehensive discourse of truth in which knowledge and experience, intellect and intuition, converge.

This synthesis redefines the very function of language. Ordinarily, poetic language is seen as the language of emotion and symbol, while rational discourse is the language of clarity and proof. The Qurʾān collapses this binary by transforming poetic imagery into an instrument of rational and spiritual insight. Its metaphors are not decorations but epistemic tools, inviting reflection and realization. When the verse speaks of “Light upon Light,” it is not merely evoking beauty; it is demonstrating, through beauty, the structure of divine reality.

What this verse demonstrates is not simply the Qurʾān’s use of metaphor but a conception of understanding in which reasoning unfolds through symbolic form, indicating a mode of cognition where intellectual clarity and contemplative imagination are structurally intertwined. The Qurʾān is thus interpreted within these traditions as exceeding the conventional boundaries between literature, philosophy, and mysticism to become a discourse of total illumination, where eloquence becomes reason, and reason becomes light.

10. Signs for Different Minds

Throughout the Qurʾān, the text itself announces that its verses contain āyāt, signs, directed to different classes of comprehension. Repeatedly, the revelation identifies distinct audiences: “for a people who reason” (li-qawmin yaʿqilūn, 2:269; 3:190; 30:8), “for a people who reflect” (li-qawmin yatafakkarūn, 3:191; 47:24), “for a people who believe” (li-qawmin yuʾminūn, 2:2; 6:57), and “for a people who are mindful” (li-qawmin yattaqūn, 2:2; 3:102). Each phrase subtly marks a different mode of reception: intellectual, contemplative, spiritual, and ethical. The Qurʾān thus declares that it speaks to a plurality of human faculties and capacities, revealing not one level of truth but multiple strata of meaning accessible to different kinds of seekers. What is often read as mere rhetorical variation can, within this framework, be interpreted as a profound statement on the diversity of human cognition and the Qurʾān’s ability to address it.

This self-referential awareness of the diversity of its audience is central to the Qurʾān’s communicative method. It signals that revelation is not a monologue to a uniform audience but a discourse adaptable to varying degrees of understanding. The same verse may be received as moral counsel by the humble, as philosophical reflection by the intellectual, and as mystical illumination by the spiritually refined. The Qurʾān thus embodies what can be called “a theology of gradation”; its guidance is universal, but its apprehension is personal and proportional. This dynamic structure underscores the claim that the Qurʾān’s inimitability lies not merely in its linguistic perfection but in its capacity to engage every level of human consciousness within a single utterance.

Previous scholarship, however, has tended to focus almost exclusively on the linguistic aspect of this miracle. Classical and modern analyses alike have highlighted the Qurʾān’s eloquence (balāghah), its syntactic precision, rhythmic symmetry, and rhetorical economy. These studies have shown the aesthetic and structural uniqueness of Qurʾānic Arabic. Yet by isolating the linguistic form from the cognitive and spiritual functions it performs, such approaches have risked mistaking the shell for the pearl. The miracle of the Qurʾān does not reside only in how beautifully it speaks, but in how effectively it makes its listeners think, believe, and awaken.

The central contribution of this article, therefore, is to move beyond the linguistic reading of iʿjāz toward a methodological one. It argues that the Qurʾān’s true miracle lies in how it employs bayān, language, as an instrument to advance burhān (rational inquiry) and ʿirfān (spiritual realization). The Qurʾānic discourse transforms speech from a vehicle of emotion into a tool of cognition. Its metaphors, parables, and rhythms are not mere ornaments; they are pedagogical mechanisms that stimulate intellect and spirit simultaneously (Abdelnour 2026, pp. 45–53). The Qurʾān does not separate beauty from truth or rhetoric from reason; it fuses them to produce a discourse that instructs the mind while captivating the heart.

Some modern interpreters, particularly those interested in the so-called “scientific miracles” of the Qurʾān, have come closer to recognizing this integrative character. They have sought to show how the Qurʾān contains implicit references to natural phenomena and rational principles. Yet their approach, while insightful, has often lacked methodological coherence. Their insights appear as scattered observations rather than a unified theory of Qurʾānic reasoning. This article seeks to build on their intuition while grounding it in a systematic hermeneutics that recognizes the Qurʾān as both a linguistic and epistemological revolution.

By identifying the Qurʾān’s combination of bayān, burhān, and ʿirfān, this article proposes a new paradigm for understanding revelation, not as a text that simply informs but as one that transforms. The Qurʾān’s discourse does not only describe truth but performs it, leading its audience through stages of comprehension. The repetition of formulas such as li-qawmin yaʿqilūn and li-qawmin yatafakkarūn is not redundant but pedagogical; it enacts a graduated awakening, calling the believer to ascend from faith to reflection, from reflection to insight, and from insight to realization. This, more than any single stylistic feature, is what this article identifies as central to how iʿjāz has been conceptualised within a range of Islamic hermeneutical traditions.

11. Conclusions: The Qurʾān as Discourse and Methodological Model

Classical and modern Qurʾānic scholarship on iʿjāz has achieved remarkable precision in the analysis of the Qurʾān’s language; its grammar, syntax, rhetoric, and literary devices. Yet in the midst of this linguistic fascination, an essential dimension of the Qurʾān’s genius has been largely overlooked: its capacity to address multiple audiences at once. Classical and modern interpreters alike have tended to treat the Qurʾān as a fixed linguistic object to be decoded rather than as a dynamic discourse that interacts with its listeners according to their intellectual, emotional, and spiritual capacities. This claim is advanced not as a historical-critical demonstration of miraculousness but as a reflexive theological and hermeneutical proposal attentive to how Qurʾānic discourse has been theorised and experienced within Islamic intellectual traditions.

This narrowing of focus has profound implications for how revelation is understood today. When the Qurʾān is treated solely as a linguistic artefact, it becomes detached from the living consciousness of its recipients. Its rhetorical power, rooted in the interplay between speaker and audience, is flattened into grammatical analysis. The listener, whose cognitive and spiritual participation is integral to the Qurʾān’s communicative design, disappears from view. Yet the Qurʾān repeatedly calls attention to its hearers: “Indeed, in this is a reminder for whoever has a heart or gives ear while he is present in mind” (Q. 50:37). The act of listening and responding is as constitutive of revelation as the divine speech itself.

Re-centering the audience in Qurʾānic interpretation thus opens a neglected dimension of theological and hermeneutical inquiry. The Qurʾān was revealed to a diverse community, ranging from poets and philosophers to merchants, slaves, and nomads. Each received the same message but absorbed it differently, according to their background and sensibility. The Qurʾān’s universality consists precisely in this differentiated address: it does not homogenize its listeners but dignifies their variety. Modern scholarship, however, has tended to universalize the text in abstraction rather than trace the contours of this lived plurality. A renewed focus on audience diversity would restore to the Qurʾān its dynamic realism and recover its role as an ongoing conversation between God and humankind.

This oversight is not merely academic; it affects how Muslims relate to revelation in contemporary contexts. When the Qurʾān is approached as a linguistic monument rather than as a living interlocutor, its message risks being frozen in form. Its transformative energy lies in the immediacy of its address; in the way it speaks differently to the doubter, the seeker, and the believer. Rediscovering this dialogical character invites modern readers to engage not only with the meanings of words but with the states of soul those words are meant to awaken. The Qurʾān’s enduring vitality depends on this encounter between text and consciousness.

Ultimately, reclaiming this forgotten dimension of the Qurʾān requires a shift from textual admiration to communicative participation. The inimitability of the Qurʾān is not exhausted by its linguistic perfection but fulfilled in its ability to speak anew to every generation and every individual. Its inimitability may thus be understood as residing not only in linguistic form but also in the ways Qurʾānic discourse has been received, interpreted, and reactivated across diverse audiences. To recover that insight is to return to the Qurʾān not as an object of study but as an event of address, as a perpetual dialogue, as understood within Islamic hermeneutical traditions, between the eternal word and the historically situated human heart.