The Qur'ān Oaths : Farāhī's Interpretation  Mustansir Mir
Islamic Studies, 1990, Spring Issue.  © Islamic Awareness, All
Rights Reserved.  I. Preliminary  Many of the early Qur'ānic
surahs contain oaths, typical of which are the oaths sworn by
the sun and the moon, day and night, and light and darkness.
While both Muslim and Western scholars have noted the
phenomenon, no satisfactory explanation exists. Ibn Hazm (d.
1064 CE), dissatisfied with the standard explanation and unable
to present an alternative, declared that the Qur'ānic oaths,
together with the 'broken letters,' make up the category of
verses called in Qur'ān 3:7 mutashabihāt ('ambiguous').[1] The
only traditional writer known to have written a book on the
subject is Ibn Qayyim (d. 1356 CE), who, in his Al-Tibyān fi
Aqsām al-Qur'ān, sets out to explain all the Qur'ān oaths. Ibn
Qayyim, however, neither aimed at nor succeeded in presenting a
systematic theory of the oaths, and, in many ways, his book
represents and reinforces the standard explanat