Daily Wonder

A running blog of sweet “daily wonders” from the Qur’an — so plentiful that the attentive reader can notice a new one every day (but posted only when I get a chance).

What I call a “wonder” is a newly noticed Qur’anic feature or property that is simple enough to barely require any explanation other than pointing it out, yet its likelihood of occurring by chance is minuscule — say one-in-100 at the very minimum to one-in-10,000, or higher.

This makes each wonder a “little miracle” on its own.

But as one sees more and more (and more!) of them — as I hope this blog will grow into — their cumulative weight turns them collectively into a most overpowering miracle of the Qur’an.

Does this sound too bold a claim? Too good to be true?

Well, dive in then and judge for yourself.

No prior knowledge of the Qur’an needed. Just bring your two eyes and a basic sense of probabilities for the journey and they will be more than enough.

Day 1: Numerical Miracles in the Counts of “Mercy” in the Quran
Fatih Guvenen Fatih Guvenen

Day 1: Numerical Miracles in the Counts of “Mercy” in the Quran

For the first-ever article I am writing on “Daily Wonders”, I decided to pick a topic that seems to present itself rather naturally. And what is more natural than opening the Qur’an to its first page and reading its very first verse (i.e., “sentence”)?

This is what we see — a declaration full of “Mercy”:

بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

In the Name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful

One curious aspect of this opening declaration is that it describes Allah (God) with two of His Divine Names — ar-Rahman (ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ), ar-Rahim (ٱلرَّحِيمِ) — that are from the very same root of “Rahmah” or “Mercy”.

So, here is my simple idea:

Take the three-letter Arabic root for “Mercy” (Ra-Ha-Mim— ر ح م ), which as we just saw appears twice in the first sentence (!) of the Qur’an alone. Use it as inspiration to do an unapologetically “mechanical” analysis of the frequency of occurrence of words derived from this root (verb/adjective/noun/etc) in the Qur’an.

This modest effort turns out to reveal some findings that is nothing but modest: a series of “sweet wonders” to cherish and appreciate in awe.

Let’s begin.

All the statistics and counts mentioned below are from the publicly-available, open-source Quranic Arabic Corpus project.

First; Some Key Facts From Corpus

Although the Corpus page for root Rā-Hā-Mīm contains a wealth of information, the short summary of facts at the top of its page will be more than sufficient to see some remarkable numerical “wonders”.

Let’s begin with these facts:

  1. Root Ra-Ha-Mim(ر ح م) occurs 339 times in the Quran in nine forms.

  2. Four forms account for the bulk (93%) of this total:

    1. Raḥmat (رَحْمَة): 114 times (infinitive — “Mercy”)

    2. Raḥmān (رَّحْمَٰن): 57 times (noun/adj. — “The Most Compassionate”)

    3. Raḥīm (رَّحِيم): 116 times (noun/adj. — “The Most Merciful”)

    4. Raḥima (رَّحِمَ): 28 times (verb — “to have/bestow mercy”)

Now consider one more — very well-known — fact:

The Qur’an has 114 chapters. Yes, 114.

Hmm, this is already beginning to sound pretty curious…

Let’s turn back to the list above, and what do we see?

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