Al-'Ankabut · Makki · ayah 48 of 69

Al-'Ankabut 29:48

وَمَا كُنتَ تَتْلُوا۟ مِن قَبْلِهِۦ مِن كِتَـٰبٍ وَلَا تَخُطُّهُۥ بِيَمِينِكَ ۖ إِذًا لَّٱرْتَابَ ٱلْمُبْطِلُونَ

“And you did not recite before it any scripture, nor did you inscribe one with your right hand. Then [i.e., otherwise] the falsifiers would have had [cause for] doubt.”

Saheeh International

Essence

He had read no scripture and written no line before the Quran came, so the one honest foothold for doubt was removed in advance.

A reflection

Could he have learned it in secret?

The oldest objection to the Quran is also the most natural. A man produced a book full of earlier prophets, laws and histories. Surely he read it somewhere. Surely someone taught him.

The ayah answers with a fact his own town could check. Before this Book, you recited no scripture and wrote none with your right hand. One commentary puts it plainly. You lived among your people a whole lifetime, and every one of them knew you neither read nor wrote. That is a long time to hide a library in a small city.

Think of a village where the van brings parcels of books once a week. Everyone knows whose door they go to. Everyone knows whose lamp burns late. If the baker's son suddenly recited a learned history, nobody would say 'inspiration'. They would say 'the parcels'. Makkah had no parcels for him. One commentary adds that no community of scripture lived in Makkah for him to sit with.

Another explanation makes a practical point. A long, detailed book of this kind could only be learned through years of study with a teacher. Study like that cannot be hidden. Someone would have noticed the meetings.

The opponents did reach for another theory. 'Legends of the ancients, which he has had written down, dictated to him morning and evening' (25:5). Notice that even this charge assumes someone else did the writing for him. They knew he could not.

What remains open for a modern sceptic is the idea of a hidden informant. The Quran names and answers that charge elsewhere (16:103). This ayah's point is narrower, and firmer. Whatever the source was, it was not his own reading. The usual road by which a man gathers such knowledge was closed, and everyone around him knew it.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.