The Original Plot; How the Quran is written

Structure

Every Story consists of a beginning, middle, and an end point. They come in forms, they can have, like most stories, a natural beginning or a natural ending, or what’s called a linear or chronological narrative form, or they can have an ending at the beginning, i.e a circular narrative form where the story ends where it begins like Jospeh’s story in the Quran, where the vision which he saw as a child pretty much foretold the ending. Alternately, there are stories whose narrative scheme is shuffled so that parts which fit into an otherwise linear and chronological sequence are rearranged so as to bring into expression a certain effect, a effect that’s to the effect of making every disjointed segment a valid building point for a new interpretation of what’s here shown to be a multiform plot, like the story of Moses where the beginning is relative depending on the specific direction which the hosting chapter intends to take.

Furthermore, we know of stories whose structure is parallelistic, here we have multiple storylines running parallel to each other to articulate a single theme; this we find in Chapter 38, where we read excerpts recounting instances of resilience and steadfastness shown by various prophets. This seems to be the most prevalent narrative form in the Quran, as here a particular notion finds its strongest expression in the morphological identity which the idea assumes-- panoramically.

Approach; Concinnity

Epistemologically, to understanding a particular chapter, we must first understand its name, and why it was named that. This is our first clue, as here is condensed the whole logic of the chapter. But before we can do that we must first understand the name which the Quran uses to refer to its chapters. Soora سوره, or, Suar سور (in plural). Following the hermeneutical method of understanding the part from the whole, and vice verse, we find, in the morphology of the term, that word for chapter ‘soora’ سوره is used to mean ‘walking’, or a ‘movement’ in a particular direction, (قُلْ سِيرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ). Here

We miss the meaning of the term if we attempt to understand the term ‘seero’ سِيرُوا as the mundane act of walking, of a continuous displacement of position, independently of the phenomenological dimension in which the environment itself is absorbed in the act, like how in Einsteinian gravity the motion of mass causes the surrounding space to bend or warp around it. The same principle figures in physics as it does aesthetics and language as in both cases, it’s one and the same mind that’s engaged in the act!

The locus of movement, the subject, moves, but always in a particular direction and for specific end-- as this is the basic activity of the mind, which in choosing its objects, assimilates only what’s relevant and filters out what’s not. Along the way, only what’s absolutely relevant is retained, like a magnet which you brush against the sand, attracting only ‘magnetic’ objects and leaving out everything else. Or a metal detector which scans only metal objects, and so on. The mind is no different in this respect. In other places, we find that the term seero is used to mean ‘easy-going’, ‘simple’, ‘straightforward’, quite consistent with that ‘filtering’ procedure. If we describe an object as ‘easy-going’, or ‘yaseer’ يسير , we mean that it’s void of ambiguity, or complications, that all the parts are in harmonious connection with one another, that in a phrase, we don’t need to carve out a path, so to speak, but follow the path that’s already been carved out. Thus the expression سِيرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ, (translated here as “Travel (navigate) throughout the land’, in which an association is made between the terms ‘Seero’ and ‘earth’; Ard) is consistent with the various descriptions which the Quran gives of the Earth,

1. Mehada مهادا (Have We not smoothed out the earth ˹like a bed˺ 78:6,),

2. Besata بساط (And Allah ˹alone˺ spread out the earth for you 71:19)

3. Ferasha فراشا (Who has made the earth a place of settlement for you 2:22)

Here, by the term ‘Seero’, is connoted those various earthy properties, as the kind of ‘movement’ which seero denotes is one which, as said, takes place within certain defined parameters. Thus in the above verse, we’re told that the whole of earth is laid out for us, in all its various climates and landscapes.

We’re doing here with a term like Seero, or Soora, is take the concept of Telos, and give it an enterprising power, and describe the dynamics of guided activity, which consists in the three modalities of induction; the assimilation process, deduction, the relation of said assimilation to an assigned limit, and abduction, which is the ‘filtration’--define by negation--method. Should our understanding of the concept of Surah be underscored by those ideas, then, we can confidently say that here, we have attained a literal key by which to unlock every chapter in the Quran; as here a basic epistemological condition is met on which hinges everything else. A Surah to which we’ve here assigned an analytic identity, is now to be approached as a ‘rule of understanding’; A rule of understanding is, as defined in the Kantian sense, is something, which

“give the existence of phenomena synthetic unity and which enable them to be collected into a definite concept of experience”

E.Cassirer 'Substance & Function and Einstein's Theory Of Relativity' p439

Surah, which at first seems untranslatable, come out as ‘Concinnity’, from Concinnitas; a term coined by Italian architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472)

“It is the task and aim of Concinnitas to compose parts that are quite separate from each other by their nature, according to some precise rule, so that they correspond to one another in appearance”

Condition, or, as commonly defined, (webster dictionary) “harmony or elegance of design especially of literary style in adaptation of parts to a whole or to each other”

http://www.concinnitascorp.com/the-nature-of-concinnitas.html

Thus from here on we shall refer to the chapters of the quran as ‘concinnities’.

Narratives as ‘concinnities’

If as established in the beginning, there exists different narrative forms, it naturally follows that different narrative forms or modalities of storytelling, are deployed depending on the overall ‘motive’ of the chapter and what it intends to communicate to its reader. This is what cleaves normal storytelling in which one modality or another happens to be used, and a ‘concinnity’ where all the modalities are used simultaneously in an anthology of interconnected narratives where each one not only shades off into the next, but is meaningful only in relation to it, and by extension to all the other modalities.

" The true embodiment of the logical universal," says Mr. Bosanquet, " takes the form of a world whose members are worlds."

S.Alexander 'Space, Time & Deity' Vol1, p234

Here, A modality, or narrative form stops being a mere modality, but becomes a concinnity, a modality that complements another and by extension a host of other modalities, all of which subject to the same rule.

Thus A concinnity contains

1. Numerical identity; A definite number of storytelling forms, or, all possible forms of storytelling

2. Mereological identity; takes place within 'numerosity'; each form is a gateway from and into the next, the continuum is not disrupted as the transitions take place.

3. Morphological identity; takes place within mereology; the story preserves a certain progression as the structure shifts perspectives.

4. Recapitulatory identity; recapitulation simply contains and repeats all the above, the overall concinnitous character of the book applies to all components, thus a word must be and can only be understood concinnitously, i.e as having a numerical, mereological, morphological and recapitulatory identity. Meaning that the frequency with which a word is used is consistent with the frequency with which it’s modified, with the frequency with which each specific modification is used. The same goes with phonetic units that are smaller than words.

Being that the Quran is so constructed, the implication here is that it's constructed by analogy to mathematics, as all mathematical functions, of modal logic, can actually be found in it, (like Cantor functions and sets) but not found as in by accident (being that mathematics is apriori) but found as in used or deployed.

Method is ‘Meaning’

Though it may seem, at first hand, somewhat complex, understanding the Quran is fairly straightforward, if, the correct approach is taken, and the correct approach comes with the territory.

The how of the process leads inevitably to the what, and the what is reached only through an assessment of the how, i.e by figuring out which of the above storytelling modalities, or connicinnities a given chapter conforms to. Once we’ve figured this out, we can use it as a rule, or a formal system, or if you prefer, algorithm, which guides our understanding of the chapter, or to use a rather appropriate analogy, we enter the interpretive edifice which we’ve here identified to find that all the furniture is arranged according to the architectonic expression of the edifice. Think Penrose stairs, or dynamic fluids, how a liquid shapes itself after the medium that it’s poured into; the content of a particular chapter likewise shape themselves after the narrative form. We want to build a sense of structure, a definite scheme, this is done by identifying the various structural levels at which the system, i.e chapter operates.

A perfect example of this is the second concinnity, Al-baqara البقرة ; the longest in the book. Here the logic of this concinnity is housed in its name, the Cow and what this animal symbolizes in the grand scheme of the book. The interpretation of this word was done by Joseph in the 12th concinnity.

“Joseph, O man of truth!” said the man, an ex inmate of his “Interpret for us ˹the dream of˺ seven fat cows eaten up by seven skinny ones; and seven green ears of grain and ˹seven˺ others dry, so that I may return to the people and let them know.”

“You will plant ˹grain˺ for seven consecutive years” replied Joseph “leaving in the ear whatever you will harvest, except for the little you will eat”

The symbolic import of cow rests in the overall cultural sense in which the verse is wrapped, the whole process of ‘Planting’, or ‘reaping and sowing’. But we must here distinguish cow from the other associated symbols which together produce the conception of culture.

Thus if we lay out our terms

Years, Fat, Slim, Seven, and Cows,

Contrasted with the disambiguation

Sowing, Reaping, Seven, years, Tough, Eating.

And ask, which of these represents ‘cow’, we shall find it there in the beginning of the processes of sowing and reaping, and of withering and loss.

The cow is the cultural process itself. It’s that which in the first case instantiates and in whom is represented the process of cultivation, and in the second case, that which in a certain case becomes erosive. The cow, in the verse, does the same thing in both cases, it eats, from this can be inferred the statement that the cow symbolizes the causal factor in the ensuing processes of generation and culture, and deterioration and erosion. A cow thus has this double, monotonic sense, a function that causes things to only increase, or only decrease.

Meaning that, if cow, causally speaking, can only symbolize ‘culture’ or ‘cultivation’ if we take those things to be the norm, and corruption and degeneration as exceptions then it's because 'positivity' are formal and original (which is logically the case, since negative processes such as degeneration can be interpreted as generative in a different direction whereas generation could not).

Which further means that what the cow symbolizes, if abstracted out of the binary scheme, is simply a monotonic or inertial factor/function. Thus what’s proposed in the above verse is an economic stalemate of the sort that prevents surplus. Here is shown a third factor besides the above two of generation and degeneration. This is 'balance' or equilibrium, to which Joseph’s prognosis provided the impetus. Thus, as an essentially inertial factor, cows move in all three directions, but in the Quran it’s to be understood positively, as a generative force. There's power in the fact that it's mentioned at all, or, 'introduced'.

Here the logic of the second concinnity is found in the symbolic import of this animal. That the chapter is named cow can be inferred from the sequence of events found in the chapter. The story of the people of Israel, the mission which moses had embarked upon, of getting his people out of egypt, represents the generative movement of the symbol, and we can say that their subjugation in egypt the erosive movement of the symbol (since they were being stopped them from prospering), to which, by the way, they almost succumbed when they were temporarily separated from Moses as verse 51 recounts.

Thus, much like Joseph, Moses is a catalyst who fulfilled that role of taking his people from one state of affairs to another. Now the cow symbol is related to that of concinnity, in that, the vicissitudes which the people of Israel experienced after the exodus, the ups and downs, as they moved towards that high Solomonic phase, are, we can say, a perfect example of concinnity, but in its base, a process which owes success to the impetus which Mosaic mission had administered.

Linearity and Non-linearity

There are, as said, numerous variations which a story can take, and, as elaborated, variations of those variation, but what’s permanent, or invariable, is that three part scheme of beginning, middle and ending, that even when we forgo the original linear structure, each configuration proves orderly in its own way and preserves a certain linearity in virtue of which its events move in a definite direction. Thus a fractured or disjointed narrative finds a linear possibility in each of its parts, i.e a new starting point. This morphological process, i.e the ability to recombine and rearrange and dictate the original distribution of an original scheme, shows the ‘mastery’ which the narrator or the interpreter maintains over the fundamental elements (as well as their original line of advance and every possible line hence), or if you like the ‘alphabet’ of storytelling or, what it really is--mythos. For all intents and purposes, Quranic stories are ‘mythical’ in nature, if by mythical we intend to mean archetypal themes, stories that, As Historian Arnold J Toynbee put it, have played their allotted parts on a thousand different stages under an infinite variety of names 'A Study Of History' chp5, p82), and since what makes the story is its agents, and the story is archetypal, so much its agent be archetypal.

Prophet vs Nabi

In this regard, the Quran uses the expression,’Naby’ نبي a term used in parallel to prophet رسول but which means something else; think about it this way if prophet is someone whose entrusted with a message, or, as we found, holds that function symbolized by the cow, of being a catalyst that affects a monotonic transition from one negative state of affairs to a positive one, a Naby is someone who symbolizes it, who serves this function long after they’re dead and gone, his story, his concinnitious service, his prophethood is the expression of this handling of the message, his encounters, his struggles, crystallize and become ‘typical’ and exemplary, so much so that they are seen embodied by persons other than the origina; persons who need not even know or have heard of the Prophets. Thus there will be, as there have been, situations identical to those encountered by the Naby, challenges to which the Naby has responded most ideally.

You’ll see, for instance, in a lot of popular novels and films approximations of, let’s say, prophetic plots. Stories which fall under the theme of ‘escaping tyranny and returning as a liberator’’or of 'carrying a whole nature on the road to prosperity’ can be said to be archetypally ‘Mosaic’ (Emancipation, Gladiator), or Stories wherein a character warns of an impending disaster and is ridiculed and laughed at can be said to approximate Noah’s and others like Hud, Saleh, Shuaib and Lut (2012, Don't look up). Stories that show characters as having mystical powers, manipulating elements, may be said to approximate Soleman or Isa. Stories of strife and overcoming affliction as approximating Ayuub (or Jobe). Stories of Discovery, and knowledge as Abrahamic (Contact, Arrival). Of revolution and uprising as Muhammad. Stories where a character returns from a seemingly hopeless situation as Joseph and Jonah.

The locus of all of these various themes is, we see, the cow, because, whether it’s an attempt to reverse or prevent a disaster as in Noah, or of rendering the right conditions for culture and prosperity as in Abraham, it’s the cow symbol that’s operative.

Such variation in the linear expression of those stories demand different plot structures to truly represent them, more than that, we can see that a common thread runs through all those archetypal narratives. Though composed of a 114 chapters of various thematic compositions, it can be said that there’s an overall, original linearity, a certain progression, by which we can locate the position of each theme with respect to the others on a continuum, that, as such, allows us to read it all as one story.

Thus if we take the Quran as narrating a single story, or as an inclusive mythical corpus, and attempt to reconstruct the original, progressive scheme, the first point will have to be simplest, the theme that contains all the others as their prerequisite, and if we are to assemble all archetypal themes embodied by the prophets, we shall find that the simplest, as in, the most general, is that represented by Adam, but not because it was the first, chronologically, but because his vicissitudes, are the most common and frequent of all the others, his struggle with the devil, and the story of the fall, are phenomena which afflict every human being, everyday, all the time.

We can understand from this point all the following themes as applicable on the personal level, as a climb back from the original fall through the various steps represented by the stories of the prophets (Anbiya’) انبياء; that the Abrahamic motif may be understood as the journey towards the truth, of discovering God, of monotheism, and of understanding the fundamentals of faith, a conception of the universe and its creator that’s purified from dogma. The mosaic theme may be said to represent a critical transition which a person undergoes from decadence towards prosperity, a sort of physical action, of being guided in the right path.

Now what’s shown here is that the concept of linearity or linear progression is but a movement from the most general cases, the more conditional cases, containing the least number of conditions, to the more complex or rarer cases which register the greatest possible number of conditions. Thus we see here, that although the Mosaic motif occurs in Abraham’s story, i.e in Abraham desertion of his hometown, it only occurs as a natural consequence of Abraham having learned the truth. Meaning that the Abrahamic motif is requisite or conditional to the mosaic. More than that, we see that the Adamic motif precedes them both, in that, both motifs, of learning the truth and of deserting the old ways are meaningful only in relation to the original fall.

Thus in codifying the various prophetic encounters, the Quran takes a hierarchical approach, laying down the foundations first, then following with everything else, thus the expression we get is that of stories within stories within stories whereby each layers conserves with the next a relation of 'more general to more specific'.

This all inclusive mythos is what in Aristotle’s system is investigated under the name tragedy; the dynamic relation between those internal themes listed above constitutes, we believe, the specific project of the Quran, because, insofar as the Quran was revealed to humans, the kinds of stories we find in it, as well as the ingenious manner of their presentation are to be understood as no more than bringing into consciousness and systematic form what already exists in an erratic and ‘uncouth' form in our collective psyche (unconscious). In writing stories, in poetry, in painting, we are trying to bring forth through sheer catharsis, not something new, but something that already exists, a look at Jung’s various researches into these psychic phenomena is enough to show the impossibility of the task of systematizing and formalizing those primitive motifs which lay in the deepest recesses of the mind, hence God’s declaration that even if the Jin and Humans were to collaborate, they would not be able to produced its likeness.