A Review on Sayyid Murtada’s “Sarfa Theory”

From the third to sixth century (After Hijrah), a theory was proposed about the miraculous aspects of the Qur’an as “Sarfah Theory” (i.e. the external interference of God in order to prohibit the confrontation of the opponents from enmity against the Qur’an). Sayyid Murtada was one of the most outstanding proponents of this theory. Although Sayyid Murtada’s tendency to this theory was the consequence of following the Mo’tazili approach, he strongly supported it through his independent work titled as Al-Mawdih. His mastership in literature, poetry, theology, fiqh and osul prevents us from ignoring this theory and Sayyid Murtada’s concerns and arguments for it. When someone like Sayyid Murtada claims that the text of the Qur’an is devoid of miracle and its miraculousness is beyond its text, we ought to study it thoroughly. Of course his version of Sarfah theory is not acceptable; however, it seems that a reformulated version is approvable. In this case, Sayyid Murtada’s theory can be defendable, as a whole. In this article, we agree with Sayyid Murtada in stating that the miraculous aspect of the Qur’an is external; however, we say that its miraculousness is related to the way of receiving it. Therefore, Sarfah here refers to the fact that God has endowed the revelation of the Qur’an just to the prophet ^PBUH and has deprived others from this gift.  

      Keywords: Sarfah theory, textual miracle, manner miracle, challenge, eloquence of the Qur’an, meter in the Qur’an, news about The Unseen, absence of discrepancy in the Qur’an

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*. Associate Professor, The Qur’an and Tradition Sciences, Qom University