Minan-ur-Rahman

Summary

This book was possibly published in 1895, but the edition we have now is from 1922. Friedrich Max Müller was a respected linguist and Sanskrit scholar and had a scholarly relationship with the Brahmo Samaj. He delivered four lectures in 1861, which were published in the form of a book. This book referred to a chart known as the 'Aryan Family' of languages. Mirza's nemesis was the Arya Samaj and he set out to prove that Arabic that was the 'mother of all languages.' Ultimately the book was an abandoned project, with no chapters that have reached us, but he challenged Müller and anyone else to a prize of 5,000 rupees, and used very crude and coarse linguistic comparisons on how he was going to Arabic was the 'mother of all languages'. It also appears that the 'you' adversary in the entire book may be Müller.

One point of interest is that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad maintained all through his life (from Braheen-e-Ahmadiyya to Chashma-e-Marifat) that languages and even minor dialects were created by God directly, and all changes in languages are with God's will. He never explains how that idea coincides with evolving changes in languages that are mentioned in this book. Perhaps this is one reason why it was not published in his lifetime. The other reason may be that the contemporary state of linguistic research was much more advanced than the theories of this book, and Mirza took on an eminent linguist in a way that does not even rise to a proper definition of what it is.

Sections and Pages

• 1 Title
• 3-17 Arabic is the mother of all languages.
  • Only language for ilhaam is Arabic and it is 'muhaimin' over all other languages. This book will prove three things:
    • Stage 1 - Proving the commonality of languages
    • Stage 2 - Proving Arabic as the mother of all languages
    • Stage 3 - Proving Arabic to be revealed due to its supernatural characteristics
  • Like a cultured person who uses eyebrows and facial expressions to modify meaning of what he says, Arabic uses simple vowel endings to create meaning that would take other languages many phrases to express
  • Arabic contains all of the characteristics of other languages, therefore it has to be accepted that other languages are branches of Arabic
    • Chinese words have a single component (i.e. no letters)
    • Native American languages that are formed of components that themselves do not mean anything
    • Conjugations like in Native American languages and Sanskrit
    • No conjugations in Chinese, but every new thought requires a new word. (Probably inspired from this paragraph at pages 120 and 121 of the book:

• If Arabic is the root, how could there be so much divergence in just 3000-4000 years?
  • The world's age is not a few thousand years, but the earth has been there for a long time (the author has, in another place, decreed the world to be about 6,000 years old).
  • Differentiation of languages does not only require a span of time or distance, but it can also be caused by these factors that result in a special configuration of throat, accent and pronunciation - such as some people cannot pronounce 'Z' and others 'R':
    • Distance from the equator
    • Effect of certain combinations of stars (planets)
    • Other unknown effects
  • The degree of such changes were great in some places and less in others, and stopped at other times. This is all by design and as required.
• Torah (Genesis, chapter 11) says that there was one language and they differentiated at Babel, modern-day Karbala.
  • Babel was 200 miles long, with a population five times that of London, on the Euphrates, and it was in Iraq, Arabia. When it turned to ruins, the cities of Basra, Koofa, Hilla, Baghdad and Madain, and all these are in Iraq, Arabia
  • After Noah's Ark, God allowed people to flourish in one area until it became a huge settlement, and then they moved to Shinar (Babel) and then they split up.
• Hebrew is close to Arabic while Sanskrit is not, but it is readily seen that their words are still changed forms of Arabic roots.
• 'I will present detailed proofs of these five attributes later':
  • First: Arabic set and system of roots is complete and support all human needs while other languages are devoid of this.
  • Second: In Arabic, nouns for God, components of the Universe, plants, animals, lifeless things, and human body parts contain great wisdom in their nomenclature; while other languages do not.
  • Third: There is a system in Arabic words (nouns and verbs?? - not clear). Within this system, nouns and verbs from the same root are chained together in wisdom and they exhibit their inter-relationships. This is not found, to this degree, in other languages.
  • Fourth: In Arabic, there are fewer words and more meaning. With alif, laam, prefixes, suffixes and tanween it works out what other languages would need many sentences.
  • Fifth: Arabic contains such roots and compositions that can completely express the most subtle of human thoughts.
• The rest of the book will be in Arabic (trans - nothing relevant in the Arabic part)
• Someone can say that I do not know Sanskrit well. I have devised a plan for that - I will pay out 5,000 rupees to anyone who can write the same for any other language. Once he gives a time frame for his work, I will deposit the money with a bank or an Arya mahajan. If the challenger does not finish within the time, he will pay interest on the deposit.
• (trans - book was never completed and below, he mentions several assistants who worked for nine months) I have written this book in 1.5 months - from the first week of April 1895 to a few days before the end of May 1895. Even during this time, it took about 1/3 or 1/4 of my time, otherwise it could have been done in a week or so working full-time.
• 17-19 Warning
  • 'I was planning to list roots, but then I gave up that idea because other languages also have roots, even though Sanskrit has about 400 and Arabic close to 2,700,000'.
  • So, now, I will present, and am asking for, a system of roots, not only a listing of roots.
  • This will also prevent the Aryas from raising another Hindu like Lekhram, dishonourable, extremely foolish, ignorant, who only used abuses who sided with the Christians. Thus, this will not be the case in this discussion, and no one with bastardly personality, dirty nature, and wickedness combined with extreme foolishness and ignorance, will have no room to talk.
  • Thanks to friends who spent many months in the endeavour to prove the commonality of languages, and there work will be known for as long as the world will exist, and they are deserving of a Divine medal:
    • Hakeem Nooruddin, Abdul Kareem Sialkoti, Ghulam Qadir, Khawaja Kamal-ud-Din, Mirza Khuda Bakhsh, Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, Muhammad Ali Khan, Mian Muhammad Khan, Ghulam Muhammad.
  • Hakeem Nooruddin also bought many English books and we know have a library of books on the subject.
• 20-44 First Section (Arabic) Arabic Roots (Just platitudes about how God led him to do this work, and it will be formed of a preamble, many chapters and an ending. Only the Urdu footnotes contain some relevant discussion)
  • First Answer to Muller. Mirza misunderstood this to be an attack on Arabs calling non-Arabs as 'Ajami. (p.133):