Language · a Light

The word for a verse is the word for a sign

An ayah is a verse of the Qur'an. It is also the word the Qur'an uses for a sign in the world: the alternation of night and day, ships running on the sea, rain that revives dead ground, sleep, lightning, and the diversity of your languages and your colours. One noun covers a sentence in a book and a fact about the world, which puts them in the same category. A person reading is looking at ayat. A person looking at the sky is also looking at ayat. It is a choice of vocabulary that makes the natural world part of the same exercise as the text, and both of them things to be read rather than only used.

Ayah, a verse and a sign

Source · Qur'an 30:22