ABSTRACT
It is important to remember that by no means are Christoph Luxenberg or even Alphonse Mingana the first people to contemplate the presence of Syriac in the Qur’an. Starting in the early centuries of Islam, Muslim exegetes frequently discussed various words which they considered to be of Syriac origin. Early Muslim writers were apparently aware of a language either still spoken in their midst or evident in texts called suryani or nabati – and they appear to have appealed to that knowledge to solve exegetical problems in the Qur’an. The basic thrust is the same as the one for Luxenberg1 and Mingana:2 if the text is problematic, then perhaps Syriac can solve the issue. Medieval Muslims took a similar basic approach.
