At the Banquet of the Word
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66207/jis.v18i1.234Keywords:
Qurʾān, adab, maʾduba, Divine Speech, ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, Labīd b. Rabīʿa, ʿUthmān b. Maẓʿūn, poetry, Qurʾānic formation, khuluqAbstract
Beginning with ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb’s remembered hesitation before the Qurʾānic word abb (Q 80:31), this essay explores an early adab of speech before revelation: inquiry joined to restraint, and knowledge accompanied by an awareness of its limits. It then turns to poets whose words encountered the Divine Word, particularly the Makkan exchange between ʿUthmān b. Maẓʿūn and Labīd b. Rabīʿa and the Prophet’s later judgment upon Labīd’s celebrated verse. Labīd’s reported response after embracing Islam—that Allah had given him Sūrat al-Baqara and Āl ʿImrān in place of poetry—opens the essay toward Ibn Masʿūd’s description of the Qurʾān as Allah’s maʾduba, His banquet. Through early lexical, exegetical, and ḥadīth sources, the essay follows the relationship between maʾduba, invitation, and adab, understood not merely as proper conduct toward the Qurʾān but as formation by it. The movement culminates in ʿĀʾisha’s description of the Prophet, upon him blessings and peace: “His character was the Qurʾān.” The banquet of the Word thus becomes both invitation and transformation: what descends as recitation enters human life as khuluq.
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