مطالب

Some religious modernists believe that correct and scientific comprehension of the Qur’an is merely provided through historical and cultural study of the context of revelation time. Others, on the other hand, advocate that knowing interior and connected evidence suffices for Qur’an comprehension. Further, they say that exterior and unconnected evidence such as cultural and historical studies can have little effect on Qur’an comprehension. These various attitudes made us research them and represent a model to assess the dependency of Qur’an comprehension on cultural and historical conditions of revelation time. The present study examined works of scholars in this field such as Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Khorramshahi, and Tabatabaei through a descriptive and analytical method. Then, a model was recommended to evaluate the dependence of understanding of the Qur’an on the cultural and historical conditions of revelation time. The model includes four components: cause of revelation; vocabulary; subject matter; expressions which encompass twelve rules based on the features of verses in each component. Input of the model is one verse and its output is a dependent, independent, or semi-dependent mode.

Hail is an atmospheric rainfall with a complex mechanism. The Greeks were among the pioneers of knowledge in ancient times and they termed “hail” as “frozen rain” (Anaximander) and “instant freezing of water and moisture” (Aristotle, n.d.). These two meanings are inconsistent with current scientific facts. The Noble Qurʼan is the most authentic text to encourage Muslim believers to think about creation and strengthen their faith in the eternal power of the Creator. For instance, the mechanism of hail falling has been expressed in the verse (Q.24:43) with specific and gradual indications. In this research, first, by library method, different explanations of this verse were obtained from valid interpretive sources and then, the scientific findings of meteorologists and climatologists on hail were extracted from reference scientific texts on atmospheric sciences. In the third stage and based on comparative method, the scientific rules were placed next to interpretations to test the novelty and degree of the allusions of this verse. We found that the stages of hail falling included:“invisible water vapor rises from the sea,” “water vapor ascends into the atmosphere,” “reaching the condensation stage,” “cloud formation,” “convergence of ascending currents,” “formation of cumulonimbus cloud,” “growth of hailstones during successive ascents and descents by adsorption and freezing of ice needles,” and finally “their fall down over ground” respectively. Meanwhile, the steps in the Noble Qurʼan are mentioned in verse (Q.24:43) in the following order:“clouds movement slowly,” “clouds convergence,” “clouds accumulation,” “the formation of mountain-like clouds,” and “hail falling from the clouds.” The results also showed that likening cumulonimbus cloud in the verse (Q.24:43) to “mountain” have four respects that were beyond the comprehension of the people at the time of the revelation of the Qurʼan. Nowadays, these features are known to stationary and satellite meteorological instruments. These four characteristics are “cloud layer temperature,” “their constituent phase,” “troughs and ridges inside the cloud” and “cloud height up to the tropopause.” Based on these four characteristics, the Noble Qurʼan considered the cloud of cumulonimbus as similar as “mountains.” Meteorologists divide any cumulonimbus cloud into three floors, including cold at the bottom, super-cold at the top and intermediate in the middle. We find these three floors in the same way in the high mountains. These floors are the current rivers (liquid phase), snow and ice reserves (solid phase) and in the middle region a combination of two liquid and solid phases, namely water and ice. Images from the cumulonimbus from above the atmosphere show dark and deep valleys and light and raised ridges. The fourth feature is to be said, none of the surface phenomena are as high as the mountains. Finally, meteorological findings show that it is the only cumulonimbus that rises from the ground to a height of 12,000 meters and more. 

The present semantic research has been performed in order to provide a cognitive and cultural explanation of conceptual metaphors in parts 20 to 30 of the Holy Qur’an. Extraction of ‘types of conceptual metaphors,’ determination of ‘high frequency metaphors,’ ‘source domains’ and ‘target domains’ is the process of conducting research using the conceptual metaphor theory. The variety of concepts of ‘target’ and the functional frequency of ‘source’ concepts indicate what concepts are intended in the holy Qur’an through metaphorical conceptualization. This study provides a basis for further understanding of the worldview presented in the Holy Qur’an and the possibility of determining the behavioral patterns of religion by identifying metaphors. The results of the present study represent a septenary classification of metaphors in the ‘empirical source domain,’ containing: ‘social life,’ ‘needs of the body and its activity,’ ‘image schemas (schema-based),’ ‘elements of nature,’ ‘person,’ ‘body parts,’ and ‘similarity-based metaphors (simile)’; Among which, the highest percentage of metaphorical conceptualization in the source domain is in ‘social life’ and the lowest one is in the domain of ‘person.’ Considering the fact that most of the human knowledge is about the elements and subdomains of ‘social life,’ Qur’anic sources in this domain have played the major role in abstracting the cultural and doctrinal concepts of religion and organizing Islamic religious experiences using the sources of this field and have been used as customary (conventional) and practical models. Accordingly, Qur’anic metaphors lead to the formation of cultural and cognitive patterns, and the ‘monotheistic belief system’ (Qur’anic) directs human bodily experiences in metaphorical conceptualization, and this ‘Qur’anic worldview’ can be seen as an Islamic cultural and cognitive model in the Qur’anic metaphorical schema.