ABSTRACT
T hese compendious verses describe with remarkable precision the pagan Meccans' stance toward the Qur'anic 'Arabiyya.:2 a paradox of interlocked rejection and enchantment. In a milieu dominated by the power of the oral word, their haughty unwillingness to admit (istakbar) its divine source was precisely because they innately recognized its superiority in terms of style and content and hence its enthralling potentialities. Alarmed by such extraordinary arresting power, the Meccans described the Qur'an, as the above verse testifies, as being sorcery inherited from predecessors. More frequently, however, the Meccans expressed their repudiation by labeling the Qur'an as being poetry or the incantation of a soothsayer (sal' kiihin). Fired by such remarks, the Qur'an emphatically rejects every possibility that it may be in any way the utterances of a kahin or a sha'ir. Q. 69:41-42; 52:29-30; 37:36; 36:69;3 for these remarks devalue the origins of the Qur'an by attributing them to demonic beings that are not greater than a jinn or a shay tan.
