Musical Inimitability of the Quran Mirrored in Arūżi Rhythmic Expressions

Different interpretations have been proposed about the inimitability of the Quran, both in terms of form and content. One of the most significant aspects of the musical order of the Holy Quran is its prosody or rhythmicity which, besides semantic and content attractiveness of the Quran, increases its beauty and amplifies its charm. What was examined in detail for the first time in this paper are prosodic chunks of the Quran, whose meters match ʿarūżi meters and which occur in many Quranic ayahs. To this end, those expressions in the first four juz’ of the Quran, which are rhythmic without any modification were extracted and classified according to their prosodic foot types. The findings clearly show that such expressions are found abundantly in the Quran, with a variety of meters belonging to both Arabic and Persian prosody. Based on the results, the number of such expressions and only inclusive of the iterative-foot chunks in the first four juz' is 120. Thus, the total number of such chunks in the whole Quran can be estimated to be exceeding thousands of expressions. The affluence of such expressions throughout the Quran implies that despite some authors who regard it as not to be intentional on the part of the Interlocutor, this phenomenon is not accidental, but can exhibit the pan-chronic and cross-linguistic nature of the inimitability of Quran.