In answer to the video "The Mysterious Letters in the Quran"
There is a pervasive, humbling Quranic principle that
12:76"above every possessor of knowledge is (one) (more) knowing"
with God being the ultimate possessor of all knowledge, hidden and apparent, allowing what He wills to be temporarily shared with His creation 2:255. This concept transpires throughout the Quran in many different ways, in order to put man's propensity for arrogance and self-sufficiency in check. For example right after sura fatiha, the plea in which man is spiritually humbled and taught to seek guidance from a superior entity, in the next sura man's intellect is immediately humbled, right from the start through the huruf muqattaat/disjointed letters.
These seemingly simple alphabetical letters are found in every Arabic text, available for all, but out of which Allah created a book the equivalent of which no intellect can produce. That intellectual, creative superiority can be observed virtually anywhere in the system of the universe; just as man makes bricks and ceramics out of soil, Allah creates thousands of flowers and plants, fruits and animals as well as man, out of the same materials.
As a testimony of one's understanding of that principle, one should therefore ask the All-Knowing to be increased in knowledge 20:114, just like the prophet David teaches in his Psalms119:27-34 to ask God to open one's intellect to grasping the Torah, increase one's knowledge and understanding of His precepts. The Quran primarily teaches humanity how to think before imparting knowledge.
Regarding those disjointed letters, there is no fixed theory on their meaning. Yet no Muslim has ever tampered with them, edited or removed them. This is despite the fact that their definite meaning remained mysterious, even among the early Muslims. Abu Bakr said
"Every book has a mystery (sirr), and the mystery of the Quran is the beginnings of the surahs".The whole corpus of traditions in general was meant at recording history and incidents of the early community, the manner in which the prophet lived his everyday life and applied the Quran, rather than relaying his exegesis of the book. That is why one doesnt find much Quran commentary attributed to the prophet, besides the verses and passages speaking of the important pillars of faith, or those connected to a particular incident in the life of the community. So although the definite opinion of the earliest Muslims as regards the muqataat isnt known, the Muslims and the memorizers throughout the ages held fast by the authenticity of the Quran by keeping them as is.
We see a similar phenomenon attesting to the preservation of the Quranic text with the bismilla/basmalla. Although the scholars and reciters have differed on whether it should be treated as a separate verse, or if it should be included in the recitation, all have kept it as an integral part of the text. Nobody denied its placement at the beginning of every sura, and all have maintained the prophetic tradition of omitting it both textually and orally from the beginning of sura tawba. From the position of a textual critic, the fact that the odd absence of the opening formula was not corrected at this single place attests to the diligence of the transmitters and compilers of the Quran, protecting its integrity from falsification.
Going back to the muqataat, there is however one report, going back to ibn Abbas where he makes the following statement as regards the letter nun which appears in 68:1
"The first thing Allah created was the pen. He ordered it to write. It said: What shall I write? He said: Write the fate. So it wrote what will happen from that day until the Day of judgement, then he created the Nun, then he raised the water and created the heavens with it and laid the earth on the back of the Nun, the Nun moved and so did the earth, so it was fixed down with mountains".
The chain is authentic but cannot be taken as evidence for the definite meaning of the muqataa letter. The reason is that this view is not attributed to the prophet. It would not be a problem had ibn Abbas been doing ijtihad, but he is here reportedly commenting on the unseen, a matter that can only be known through revelation. Some commentators have made a connection between the letter nun, and the phonetically similar word nuun which appears in 21:87 in reference to a large fish. This laid the basis to many fantastic stories in several books of tafsir, speaking of a giant whale carrying the earth. This could be influenced by the Biblical description of pillars keeping earth afloat above the waters on which it was established Ps24:2,136:6. The exegetes however unanimously noted the absurdity of the concept, although they mentioned it, saying it most probably originated in Jewish traditions, as noted by the likes of al-thaalabi. There is in fact a very similar statement of Kaab al-Ahbar and ibn Abbas is known to have quoted israeliyyat from him. Kaab was an early Jewish convert to Islam known for adding his talmudic knowledge, as well as local Arabian Jewish folklore, while commenting on the Quran. However when he did so, Kaab did not attribute his opinion to the prophet. Ibn Abbas here might have been simply relating what contemporary Jews believed, without confirmation or negation. This is in fact what the prophet told the Muslims as they began interacting with the people of the book
"The Prophet said: Convey (my teachings) to the people even if it were a single sentence, and tell others the stories of People of Israel (which have been taught to you), for it is not sinful to do so. And whoever tells a lie on me intentionally, will surely take his place in the (Hell) Fire".
Other mufassirun have understood this "nun" to mean an inkpot, a tablet of light, or an abbreviation of Rahman. All these attempts demonstrate the point of these letters which is about humbling man in his pursuit of knowledge.
It is to be noted that this hadith, along with others weak ones related to the Islamic view of cosmology, were kept by the scholars and used to corroborate certain notions found in more trustworthy sources. Among such weak ahadith is
"Above the seventh heaven there is a sea, the distance between whose surface and bottom is like that between one heaven and the next. Above that there are eight mountain goats the distance between whose hoofs and haunches is like the distance between one heaven and the next. Then Allah, the Blessed and the Exalted, is above that".
Some reports are outright forgeries attributed to later jurists the likes of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal after their death, as is found in a tract called Kitab al-sunna, a pro-anthropomorphic work. Among such ahadith put in the mouth of renowned authorities are "when He Most Blessed and Exalted sits on the Kursi, a squeak is heard like the squeak of a new leather saddle" or "Allah wrote the Torah for Moses with His hand while leaning back on a rock, on tablets of pearl, and the screech of the quill could be heard. There was no veil between Him and him" or "The angels were created from the light of His two elbows and chest". If anyone among the salaf was far removed from any tinge of anthropomorphisms it was Ibn Hanbal, whose position on the matter was known as purely literal, and avoided delving beyond the plain reading of any statement from the Quran or the prophet describing something from Allah. Another work with its share of forgeries is Ibn al-Qayyim’s Ijtima al-juyush al-Islamiyya.
As to the huruf, Im not sure whether this youtuber is being serious in his claim, but nowhere did the preislamic poets start their odes with similar disjointed letters.
Others tried explaining them by appealing to a polemical anti-Karaite treatise dated to the 10th century CE, where mention is made of 10 Jews that faked their conversion to Islam to avoid harm befalling them. They then began teaching some verses to the prophet. Besides the contradicting fact that in this polemical text, those Jews themselves begin attacking the Medina and Khaybar Jews, not a single of those verses can be found either in the Quran or in the whole corpus of Islamic literature.
It is additionally claimed that each of them inserted his name, within a sura in a cryptic manner, resulting in the huruf al muqataat. Here again one can easily detect the falsehood. These authorship references arent said to be at the beginning of a fabricated sura but part of a whole verse everytime, nowhere to be found in the current Quran. In addition from a linguistic viewpoint, the words which these letters claim to be abreviations of, can only work if one were to substitute, add or revise the pronunciations of these letters.
For example YA-SIN starting sura 36 is supposed to be the abbreviation of israa'il. As anyone with rudimentary knowledge of Arabic knows, israa'il is composed of alif-sin-ra-lam. Nothing to do with ya-sin.
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