Thursday, October 31, 2019

The sustainability of Organizing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The sustainability of Organizing - Essay Example It is this trust that helps an organization to be fruitful and develop. By using the word 'trust' it is not meant to be applicable to any specific firm or individual. It is not only applicable towards clients and suppliers but it is relevant to everybody associated with the company or organization. This principle could be formulated into a HR technique that would yield surplus in the long run. Trust is not just about the stake holders of the company but more so it is applicable towards its employees too. There is no meaning of showing a bright future where there is none; rather it would be far more positive attitude to reveal everything that is true about the organization. It is not only a moral approach but a trust building operation that would prove to be helpful in future and a HR manager would never let go a chance to win the faith of a worker. (Mukherjee, 28) Revealing the open truth about the company is the most effective way of taking an employee into complete confidence. If the statement 'man is a social animal' is true then this management principal would be the best possible relevant example of it. Consider this- every individual is shaped by the virtue of his or her environment (Lamb, 23). Therefore it is obvious that an employee would be governed by the nature of workplace he or she is associated with.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Wireless Protocol Standards Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Wireless Protocol Standards - Essay Example WAP also brought in improved security factors propagated by mobility. If we look into the areas where WAP based services is used today it can be said that it is used in banking services, stock exchange, hotel reservations, bus schedules, Internet access and e-mail, will be accessible by general mobile phones. WAP helps easy and quick delivery of relevant information and services to mobile users with wireless terminals. However, the main disadvantage is that it comes with limited displays and data transfer capabilities. In fact WAP is an arrangement that is made for a set of communication protocols to standardize the way in which cellular devices use Internet access, together with World Wide Web, news groups, e-mail and IRC (Paukkunen, 1999). Over the years several such standards have evolved and this paper intends to discuss some of them in detail. 802.11 standards: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in the year 1997 created the first WLAN standard and it was named 802.11 after the name of the group formed to oversee its development. However, soon the disadvantage of using 802.11 came into picture and it was found that 802.11 only supported a maximum network bandwidth of 2 Mbps. As a result of this the information transfer was too slow for most applications. Today, ordinary 802.11 wireless products are no longer manufactured due to the lack of demand (Mitchell, 2008). 802.11b: As the technology advanced IEEE expanded on the original 802.11 standard in July 1999 and created the 802.11b specification. It was found that 802.11b supports bandwidth up to 11 Mbps when comparable to traditional Ethernet. Similar to 802.11, 802.11b uses the unregulated radio signalling frequency (2.4 GHz). As a result of lower frequencies, this is common among vendors particularly to lower their production costs. The use of 802.11b has some disadvantages. For instance, being unregulated, 802.11b device can incur hindrance from other devices such as

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Security system for DNS using cryptography

Security system for DNS using cryptography 1. Introduction Scope Of The Project The domain name system has become a serious equipped part of the Internet communications, though it doesn’t contain secured mechanism to guarantee data integration or verification. Extensions to DNS provides services to security awares resolves are applications through the Cryptographic digital signatures which are included as resource records and also provides storage of valid public keys in the DNS which support general public key distribution services and also DNS security. The stored keys make security aware resolvers to know authenticating key of zone and these keys can be used to maintain other protocols and extensions gives for the authenticating DNS protocol transactions also. DNS provides security using the concepts of Digital signature and Asymmetric key cryptography. In this asymmetric key is send as a substitute of private key. DNS security uses message digest algorithm to compact message and PRNG (pseudo random number generator) algorithm in order to generate this public and private key. Signature which is formed by combining message with the private key using DSA Algorithm is send along with public key To form a signature receiver makes use of the public key and DSA Algorithm. If the received message signature is matched then that message is decrypted and will be read or else it will be discarded. Problem Statement Authenticity is based on entity identification where the entity is genuine. In many network applications entity can be identified by name or addresses. In high level applications names are used for authentication as the address lists are difficult to create, to understand and also for maintaining Assume if an entity wants to take off other entity identification, then it is enough to change mapping between low level address and its high level name which means that attacker can forge someone’s name by changing the address associated from his name to those name he wants to takeoff. If this happens an authenticator cannot differentiate between the correct and false entity. 2. Overview Of The DNS In order to connect a system which supports IP then the initiating host should know the IP address before only which is a 32-bit number and it represents the system location in a network and this address is divided into four octets which are separated by a dot character(â€Å".†) and each octet is represented by a decimal number. Though it is easier to remember this four decimal numbers than thirty two 1’s and 0’s,a limit as to how many IP addresses can be remembered by a person without any directory support. Directory basically assigns hosts names to IP addresses . The Stanford Research Institute’s Network Information Center (SRI-NIC) became the responsible authority for maintaining unique host names for the Internet. The SRI-NIC maintained a single file, called hosts.txt, and sites would continuously update SRI-NIC with their host name to IP address mappings to add to, delete from, or change in the file. As the Internet grew rapidly, managing the files become difficult and also the hostnames required to be unique allover the worldwide internet. As the internet size increases the guarantee the uniqueness of host name became impossible. The need for hierarchical naming structure and distributed management of host names lead for the creation of a new networking protocol that was flexible enough for use on a global scale [ALIU]. Internet distributed database is created and this maps the computer system’s names with their respective numerical IP network address. This Internet lookup facility is the DNS. Delegation of authority is important to the distributed database. No single organization is responsible for host name to IP address mappings for longer, but somewhat those sites that are responsible for maintaining host names for their organization(s) can gain that control again. Fundamentals Of DNS The DNS not only supports host name to network address resolution, known as forward resolution, but also network address to host name resolution, known as inverse resolution. This ability of mapping human memorable system names into computer network numerical addresses, its dispersed nature, and its strength, the DNS has become a vital component of the Internet. Without DNS, the only way to reach other computers on the Internet is to use the numerical network address. Connecting a distant computer system using IP addresses is not much user-friendly illustration of a system’s location on the Internet and thus the DNS is heavily relied upon to get back an IP address by referencing just a computer systems Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). A FQDN is mainly a DNS host name which represents where to decide this host name within the DNS hierarchy. Related Works The Domain Name Space The DNS is a hierarchical tree structure. Its root node is known as the root domain. A label in a DNS name directly corresponds with a node in the DNS tree structure. A label is an alphanumeric string that exclusively identifies that node from its brothers. Dot notation (â€Å".†) is used to connect labels together and labels are written from left to right. A DNS name that contains several labels represents its path along the tree to the root. Only one zero length labels are accepted and reserved for the root of the tree. This is referred to as the root zone. As the length of the root label is zero, all FQDNs end in a dot [RFC 1034]. As a tree is traversed in an rising manner (i.e., from the leaf nodes to the root), the nodes become increasingly less specific (i.e., the leftmost label is most specific and the right most label is least specific). Typically in an FQDN, the host name is the left most label , while the next label to the right is the local domain to which the host belongs. The local domain can be a sub domain of another domain. The name of the parent domain is then the next label to the right of the sub domain (i.e., local domain) name label, and so on, till the root of the tree is reached   When the DNS is used to record an IP address back into a host name (i.e., inverse resolution), makes use of the same scheme of labels from left to right (i.e., most specific to least specific) when writing the IP address. This is in contrast to the typical demonstration of an IP address whose dotted decimal notation from left to right is least specific to most specific. For this, IP addresses in the DNS are usually represented in reverse order. IP addresses comes under a special DNS top level domain (TLD), known as the in-addr.arpa domain. By doing this, using IP addresses to find DNS host names are handled just like DNS host name lookups to find IP addresses. DNS Components The DNS has three major components, the database, the server, and the client [RFC 1034]. The database is a distributed database and comprises of the Domain Name Space, which is basically the DNS tree, and the Resource Records (RRs) that define the domain names within the Domain Name Space. The server is generally referred to as a name server that is usually responsible for organizing some portion of the Domain Name Space and also for supporting clients in finding information within the DNS tree. Name servers are authoritative for the domains in which they are responsible. They serve as a delegation point to identify other name servers that have authority over sub domains within a given domain. The zone information is the RR data found on the name server that makes up a domain Thus, name servers have zones of authority. A single zone can either be a forward zone (i.e., zone information that pertains to a given domain) or an inverse zone (i.e., zone information that maps IP addresses into DNS host names). DNS allows more than one name server per zone, but only one name server can be the primary server for the zone. Changes to the data for a zone takes place in Primary servers. Copies of the primary server’s database are maintained in all other name servers for a zone. These servers are called as secondary servers. . A DNS RR has 6 fields: NAME, TYPE, CLASS, TTL, RD Length, and RDATA. The NAME field holds the DNS name, to which the RR belongs. The TYPE field is the TYPE of RR. This field is necessary as it is common for a DNS name to have more than one type of RR. The more common types of RR are found in The CLASS in this case is IN and it stands for Internet. Other classes also exist but are omitted for brevity. The TTL is the time, in seconds, that a name server can cache a RR. A zero time to live means that a server is not to cache the RR. RD Length is the length of the RDATA field in octets. The RDATA field is the resource data field which is defined for each TYPE of RR uniquely, but in common it can be considered as the value into which the entity specified in the NAME field maps. The NAME field can be thought of as the subject of a query, although this is not always the case, in RDATA field the answer is the contained data (even though the entire RR is returned in a DNS response) [RFC 1035]. RRs are grouped into resources records sets (RRSets). RRSets contain 0 or more RRs [RFC 2136] that have the same DNS name, class, and type, but (i.e., RDATA) different data. If the name, type, class and data are the same, for two or more records then there exists a duplicate record for the same DNS name. Name servers should suppress duplicate records [RFC 2181]. The Figure 3 shows an example of an RRSet. The client component of the DNS typically contains software routines, known as functions that are responsible for requesting information from the Domain Name Space on behalf of an application. These functions are bundled collectively into a software library, commonly referred as the resolver library. For this reason, clients are often called resolvers and resolver documentation functions are dependable for sending a query to a name server requesting information concerning a DNS name and returning the answer to the query back to the requestor. DNS Transactions DNS transactions occur continuously across the Internet. DNS zone transfers and DNS queries/responses are the two most common transactions. A DNS zone transfer occurs when the secondary server updates its copy of a zone for which it is authoritative. The secondary server makes use of information it has on the zone, namely the serial number, and checks to see if the primary server has a more recent version. If it does, the secondary server retrieves a new copy of the zone. A DNS query is answered by a DNS response. Resolvers use a finite list of name servers, usually not more than three, to find out where to send queries. If the first name server in the list is available to answer the query, than the others in the list are never consulted. If it is unavailable, each name server in the list is consulted until a name server that can return an answer to the query found. The name server that receives a query from a client can act on behalf of the client to resolve the query. Then the name server can inquiry other name servers one at a time, with each server consulted being most likely closer to the answer. The name server that has the answer sends a response back to the original name server, which then can store the response and send the answer back to the client. Once an answer is cached, a DNS server can use the cached information when responding to consequent queries for the same DNS information. Caching makes the DNS more capable, especially when under heavy load. This efficiency gain has its tradeoffs; the most important is in security. Proposed System Taking the above existing system into concern the best solution is using Pseudo Random Number Generator for generating Key Pair in a quick and more secured manner. We use MD5 (or) SHA-1 for producing Message Digest and Compressing the message. Signature is created using Private Key and Message Digest that is transmitted along with the Public Key. The transfer of the packets from each System to System is shown using Graphical User Interface (GUI). Each time the System get the message, it verifies the IPAddress of the sender and if match is not found then discards it. For verification, the Destination System generates Signature using Public Key and DSA Algorithm and verifies it with received one. If it matches it Decrypts else it discards. The Following functions avoid the pitfalls of the existing system. Fast and efficient work Ease of access to system Manual effort is reduced 3. DNSSEC In 1994, the IETF formed a working group to provide the security issues in the DNS protocol are surrounding the DNS. And these extensions are referred commonly to as DNSSEC extensions. These security enhancements to the protocol are designed to be interoperable with non-security aware implementations of DNS. The IETF achieved this by using the RR construct in the DNS that was knowingly designed to be extensible. The WG defined a new set of RRs to hold the security information that provides strong security to DNS zones wishing to implement DNSSEC. These new RR types are used in combination with existing types of Resource Records. This allows answers to queries for DNS security information belonging to a zone that is protected by DNSSEC to be supported through non-security aware DNS servers. In order to gain widespread approval, the IETF DNSSEC WG acknowledged that DNSSEC must provide backwards compatibly and must have the capability to co-exist with non-secure DNS implementations. This allows for sites to move around to DNSSEC when ready and allows less difficulty when upgrading. This also means that client side software that are not DNSSEC aware can still correctly process RRSets received from a DNSSEC server [CHAR]. In March of 1997, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) met in order to discuss the development of Internet security architecture. Existing security mechanisms and those that are under development, but have not yet become values, that can play a part in the security architecture were identified in this meeting.. They even found the areas where adequate security cannot be achieved using existing security tools. Core security necessities for the Internet security structural design was recognized in this meeting. DNSSEC is one of the security protocols recognized as core and the protection that it provides false cache information against injection information is important to the core security requirements of the Internet [RFC 2316]. DNSSEC Objectives: A basic principle of the DNS is that it is a public service. It requires accurate and steady responses to queries, but the data considered as public data. As such, it is existed in integrity and for validation, but not for access control and privacy. Thus, the objectives of DNSSEC are to provide authentication and integrity to the DNS. Authentication and integrity of information held within DNS zones is generated through the use of public key technology and provided through the use of cryptographic signatures. Security aware servers, resolvers, and applications can then take advantage of this technology to guarantee that the information obtained from a security aware DNS server is true and has not been changed. Although the DNSSEC WG chose not to provide confidentiality to DNS connections, they did not remove the ability to provide support for confidentiality. Other applications outside of the DNS may choose to use the public keys contained within the DNS to provide confidentiality. Thus the DNS, in real meaning, can become a worldwide public key distribution mechanism. Issues such as cryptographic export are not, and may never be, solved worldwide; however, the DNS provides mechanisms to have multiple keys, each from a different cryptographic algorithm for a given DNS name, as a means to help improve this problem. Performance Considerations: Performance issues are a concern for the security extensions to the DNS protocol and several aspects in the design of DNSSEC are besieged to avoid the overhead linked with processing the extensions. For example, formulating another query that asks for the signature belonging to the RRSet just retrieved is not necessarily the most efficient way to regain a signature for the RRSet. This additional query is avoided whenever possible by allowing information retrieved from secured zones to be accompanied by the signature(s) and key(s) that authenticate the information. DNSSEC Scope: The scope of the security extensions to the DNS can be summarized into three services: key distribution, data origin authentication, and transaction and request authentication. Key Distribution: The key distribution service allows for the recovery of the public key of a DNS name to confirm the authenticity of the DNS zone data, and it also provides a means through which any key linked with a DNS name can be used for purposes other than DNS. The public key distribution service supports several different types of keys and key algorithms. Data Origin Authentication: Data origin authentication is the heart of the design of DNSSEC. It mitigates such threats as cache poisoning and zone data compromise on a Domain Name System server. The Resource Record Sets within a zone are cryptographically signed and thereby giving a high level of assurance to resolvers and servers that the data just received can be trusted. Digital signature technology which contains the encrypted hash of the RRSet that is a data in the RRSet, it is the cryptographic checksum is used by DNSSEC to sign DNS RRSet. The hash is signed (i.e., digitally encrypted) using a private key belonging to the designer of the information, known as the signer or the signing authority. The digital signature is checked by the receiver of the RRSet against the data received in the RRSet. This is done by first decrypting the digital signature using the public key of the signer to get the original hash of the data. Then using the same cryptographic checksum algorithm, the recipient computes its own hash on the RRset data and the results of the hash found in the digital signature are compared with the hash just computed. If the values of the two hash matches, then the data has consistency and the origin of the data is true [CHAR]. DNS Transaction And Request Authentication: DNS requests and DNS message headers can be verified using DNS transaction and request confirmation. This guarantees that the answer is in response to the original query and that the response came from the server for which the query was intended. Thus the assurance for both can be done in one step. Part of the information, signature produced from the concatenation of the query and response is returned in a response to a query from a security aware server. This allows a security aware resolver to perform any necessary verification concerning the transaction can be performed by the security aware resolver Another use of transaction and request verification is for DNS Dynamic Updates. Without DNSSEC, DNS Dynamic Update does not provide a mechanism that prohibits any system with access to a DNS reliable server from updating zone information. In order to provide security for such modifications, Secure DNS Dynamic Update incorporates DNSSEC to give strong verification for systems allowed to dynamically manipulate DNS zone information on the primary server [RFC 2137]. DNSSEC Resource Records: The IETF created several new DNS RRs to maintain the security capabilities provided by DNSSEC extensions. The RRs related to the DNS are the KEY RR, SIG RR, and the NXT RR. DNSSEC utilizes the KEY RR for storing cryptographic public keys, one public key per KEY RR. It is the KEY RR that is used for proof of a DNS RRSet’s signature. SIG RR contains the signature for a RRSet that is used to prove the authenticity and integrity of the information in the RRSet. The NXT RR is the nonexistent RR and is used to cryptographically assert the nonexistence of a RRSet. CERT RR is another RR that does not bring any additional security functions to the DNS, but is provided so that public key certificates can be kept within the DNS for use in applications outside of the DNS [RFC 2538]. In much the same way an application wishing to communicate with a distant IP host generates a query to resolve the host name, a security application wishing to make encryption with another entity, generates a CERT query to getback the entity’s public key certificate. For further explanation on KEY, SIG, and NXT RRs and their RDATA fields and flags not contained herein, please reference RFC 2535 and related documents. KEY RR KEYRR contains the key for a DNS name. Any type of query for a DNS name, found in a secured zone, results in a response that contains the answer to the query. The KEY RR linked with the DNS name can accompany this response. The KEYRR is used to validate the data by the resolver that generated the query without sending another query for the Key RR and there by reducing the queries required for a DNS name in a secured zone. KEY RR is used by DNSSEC for storing cryptographic public keys; though, it is not a public key certificate. Instead, the CERT RR stores public key certificates. The key found in the RDATA section of the KEY RR belongs to the DNS name that is listed first in the KEY RR .The owner name can represent a zone, a host, a user, et al. The Key RR contains information regarding the security characteristics of the key and it’s allowed usage for the given owner name. security information such as the public key, algorithm type, protocol type, and flags that specify such things whether the DNS name has a public key or not are provided by Key RR. The actual format of the public key found in the RDATA section of the KEY RR is determined by the public key algorithm. Many key algorithms are supported and are defined in RFC 2535 as RSA/MD5, Diffie-Hellman, and Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA), and the elliptic curve algorithm. Only DSA support is compulsory. The protocol octet is another field that indicates for which protocol the public key is valid. TLS, email, DNSSEC, and IPsec are some of the previously assigned protocols. As both the public key algorithm field and the protocol octet is an 8-bit field, theoretically up to 255 different algorithms and 255 different protocols can be used in combination with the pub lic key. Out of the sixteen bits used for setting various flags two bits are known as the type bits. All four combinations of the type bits show the usage of KEY RR. They are confidentiality, authentication, confidentiality and authentication, or none. The last one indicates a key does not exist for the DNS name. In this way, one can cryptographically states that the given owner name does not have a key though it is in a secure zone. Other two bits are used to identify three kinds of entities for which this key belongs, such as user, zone, or something that is not a zone. Indicating a host with these flags is actually done by using the flags to indicate that the Information of the DNS zone which is on the primary server. Thus a host is implied rather than specified by the flags. SIG RR: SIG RR is another resource record type. It contains a signature and also provides verification for an RRSet and the signature’s validity time. In a secure zone, an RRSet has one or more SIG RR associated with it and this scenario of having more than one SIG RR for a given RRSet arises if more than one cryptographic algorithm is used for signing the RRSet. Some sites may choose to do this for issues such as cryptographic export restrictions. RDATA section of a SIG RR has a number of fields. In the signature field the signature is belonged to a specific RR. A type covered field is used to indicate the RRtype of the RRSet (NS, MX, PTR, etc.). The signer’s field contains the signer’s name which a resolver or server should know for verifying the signature. The SIG RR has an algorithm field and it is identical to that KEY RR. Since signatures have termination times, as do individual RRs, the SIG RR has numerous time fields. The SIG RRs used for request authentication and transactions and for these are specially the target of a query, security attentive servers try to include in the response the SIG RRs needed to authenticate the Resource Record Set. Hence, a server will receive an answer to an RRSet and it is belonging to a secure zone that does not have the SIG RR. This situation can normally happen when a size limitation is exceeded due to the SIG RR or when a response comes from a non-security aware server. Under these circumstances, the security aware server is essential for another query especially requesting any missing SIG RRs required concluding the confirmation process. NXT RR: DNS provide the ability to cache negative responses. In the RRSet negative response does not exist for a query. DNSSEC provides signatures for these nonexistent RRSets, so these nonexistence RRSets in a zone can be authenticated. By using the NXT RR that is used to identify a variety of DNS names that are not available or for an existing DNS name a wide range of RR types that are unavailable. For nonexistent DNS names two possibilities are exist. First one is that the DNS names don’t contain any RRs; it simply may not exist. The other one is that the RR type in the query does not exist, but the DNS name will be exists. And in this all the records are arranged in alphabetical order to handles the proof of non existence of a DNS name. This method is used for canonical order and is defined in RFC 2535. Then when a query is received for a nonexistent name, after the name in the query is sent back a NXT RR containing the DNS name of the next DNS RRSet occurring canonically or alphabetically†. With the DNS name a NXT record is sent back and the RR types that the name does in fact has to handle a proof of nonexistence of a RR type for an accessible DNS name . When SIGRRs are generated for a zone the entire NXTRRs for a zone should be generated. Within the DNS Security conscious DNS servers are the source of all security-related information. Three main functions of any primary DNS server are managing the caching of DNS information and managing authoritative zone information and respond to client queries. A primary DNS server has more responsibilities to each of these functions because of security conscious. In a zone’s master database file security aware server includes the addition of SIG, KEY, and NXT RRs for an Authoritative zone information management system. The RRSets is generated for the SIG RRs and these are belonging to a zone. For generating the SIG belongs to the zone we are using a private key and itself as these private keys of servers are mostly found in on-line, it is feasible that these keys could be compromised. In contrast, the zone’s private key is reserved off-line for the majority purposes, so its compromise is less likely and the power of the data is further certain and is retrieved occasi onally to re-sign all the records found within the zone. Once the new SIG RRs are generated they are included with the rest of the information in the zone’s master file and whenever SIGRRs are generated these NXT RRs should also be generated on the server and is located into a zone’s master file. At the server side on-line signing also occurred. For DNS queries the transactions and request authentication, the server preparing the reply and that reply must use its private key and that private key is for signing. Moderately the zone key since it is reserved off-line. In the other case in which a zone key is not used for signing is for transaction. For dynamic updates the request authentication is used. The private key of the host creating the request and that request must be used. In very rare cases as DNS queries and active update requests can occur, the signer’s private keys must be maintained on-line. The protection of these on-line private keys is of extreme significance; though these are protected ahead of the scope of the paper. RFC 2541 discusses the operational considerations of SIG RR and KEY. A security aware server must properly control the caching of all security related RRs for doing a caching. The maintaining of a four cache states starts with the extra duty in caching of a security aware server starts. One state, which has a succeeding state in a non-security aware server, is Bad. When a bad reply is received the information contained in that is some way corrupt, and a non-security aware server throws away the reply message without caching it (and typically logs the event) in a non-security aware server. In much the same way, a security aware server can throw away a bad response, but in this case, a bad response means that the SIG RR verifications are failed on the data. Even still the RRSet in the response may look valid, and with the related signature fault of the data checks is a severe condition. In the RRSet Authenticated, Pending and Insecure are the other three states. There is no available data to use to ensure the accurateness of the RRSet in Insecure state. It does not mean the data is bad, just that it cannot be authenticated. This usually occurs from non-secured zones for RRSets. The RRSet cached has been fully definite through the use of the SIG RRs and KEY RRs is called Authentication. The cached data is still in the course of being checked is called pending. When to expire a cached RRSet another server task is caching. Once an RRSet is cached, a count down to zero from the original TTL is started and it is maintained for the cached record. The RRSet is separated from the cache once zero is reached. The cache has changed a slight for security aware servers. When a cached RRSet is expired the TTL could not be the only time to find out the cache. Two new times are now used in addition to the TTL and these finally decide when to expire the RRSet from the cache. The new times are used to find when the signature’s validity time period for the authenticated RRSet expires, rather than just when the RRSet should be expired. These original times are kept in the SIG RR and are known as the signature begins time and the signature end time. For security aware clients and server this information is distant more essential on which to base expiration since it is cryptographically declared. Since the signature end time seems have a link to the TTL , the TTL field cannot be removed due to the backward compatibility issues. For expiring valid RRSets TTL aging is still integrated. If the TTL expires earlier to the signature end time, and the RRSet is decomposed when the TTL strikes zero, the TTL is decremented as normal. If the signature expiration time occurs previous to when the TTL expire, the TTL is familiar to the signature end time and then the normal countdown of the TTL is continued. Both security aware and security unaware resolvers involve answering queries, when a client is responses to a query. In a secured zone the non security aware resolver produces a query and sends it to a security aware server for gaining the information. With either valid or timid data the security aware servers can respond. The checking disabled (CD) flag is set when a security aware server sends the pending data. The security aware server knows not to send Pending data since a resolver not participating in DNSSEC in no way sets the CD flag in a DNS query. The security unaware resolver processes the reply message as common, since sending insecure data is same as DNS without DNSSEC. The security unaware resolver ignores the additional security information till it receives the valid data and it gives the response as normal.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Landfills :: essays research papers fc

It has long been believed that the largest entity brought upon the Earth by humankind is the Pyramid of the Sun, constructed in Mexico around the start of the Christian era. The mammoth structure commands nearly thirty million cubic feet of space. In contrast, however, is the Durham Road Landfill, outside San Francisco, which occupies over seventy million cubic feet of the biosphere. It is a sad monument, indeed, to the excesses of modern society [Gore 151]. One might assume such a monstrous mound of garbage is the largest thing ever produced by human hands. Unhappily, this is not the case. The Fresh Kills Landfill, located on Staten Island, is the largest landfill in the world. It sports an elevation of 155 feet, an estimated mass of 100 million tons, and a volume of 2.9 billion cubic feet. In total acreage, it is equal to 16,000 baseball diamonds [Miller 526]. By the year 2005, when the landfill is projected to close, its elevation will reach 505 feet above sea level, making it the highest point along the Eastern Seaboard, Florida to Maine. At that height, the mound will constitute a hazard to air traffic at Newark airport [Rathje 3-4]. Fresh Kills (Kills is from the Dutch word for creek) was originally a tidal marsh. In 1948, New York City planner Robert Moses developed a highly praised project to deposit municipal garbage in the swamp until the level of the land was above sea level. A study of the area predicted the marsh would be filled by the year 1968. He then planned to develop the area, building houses and attracting light industry. Mayor Impelliteri issued a report titled "The Fresh Kills Landfill Project" in 1951. The report stated, in part, that the enterprise "cannot fail to affect constructively a wide area around it." The report ended by stating, "It is at once practical and idealistic" [Rathje 4]. One must appreciate the irony in the fact that Robert Moses was, in his day, considered a leading conservationist. His major accomplishments include asphalt parking lots throughout the New York metro area, paved roads in and out of city parks, and development of Jones Beach, now the most polluted, dirty, overcrowded piece of shoreline in the Northeast. In Stewart Udall's book The Quiet Crisis, the former Secretary of the Interior lavishes praise on Moses. The JFK cabinet member calls Jones Beach "an imaginative solution ... (the) supreme answer to the ever-present problems of overcrowding" [Udall 163-4]. JFK's introduction to the book provides this foreboding passage: "Each generation must deal anew with the raiders, with the scramble to use public resources for private profit, and

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Arabic Literature

Arabic literature Main article:  Arabic literature Main article:  Literature of Morocco Ibn Tufail  (Abubacer) and  Ibn al-Nafis  were pioneers of the  philosophical novel. Ibn Tufail wrote the first fictional Arabic  novel  Hayy ibn Yaqdhan  (Philosophus Autodidactus) as a response to  al-Ghazali's  The Incoherence of the Philosophers, and then Ibn al-Nafis also wrote a novel  Theologus Autodidactus  as a response to Ibn Tufail's  Philosophus Autodidactus.Both of these narratives had  protagonists(Hayy in  Philosophus Autodidactus  and Kamil in  Theologus Autodidactus) who were  autodidactic  feral children  living in seclusion on adesert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone with animals on the desert island for the rest of the story in  Philosophus Autodidactus, the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in  Theologus Autodidactus, developing into the earlies t known  coming of age  plot and eventually becoming the first example of a  science fictionnovel. 17][18] Theologus Autodidactus, written by the  Arabian  polymath  Ibn al-Nafis  (1213–1288), is the first example of a science fiction novel. It deals with various science fiction elements such as  spontaneous generation,  futurology, the  end of the world and doomsday,resurrection, and the  afterlife. Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using the  scientific knowledge  of  biology,  astronomy,  cosmology  and  geology  known in his time.His main purpose behind this science fiction work was to explain  Islamic  religious teachings in terms of  science  and  philosophy  through the use of fiction. [19] A  Latin  translation of Ibn Tufail's work,  Philosophus Autodidactus, first appeared in 1671, prepared by  Edward Pococke   the Younger, followed by an English translation by  Simon Ockley  in 1708, as well as  German  and  Dutch  translations. These translations later inspired  Daniel Defoe  to write  Robinson Crusoe, regarded as the  first novel in English. 20][21][22][23]  Philosophus Autodidactus  also inspired  Robert Boyle  to write his own philosophical novel set on an island,  The Aspiring Naturalist. [24]  The story also anticipatedRousseau's  Emile: or, On Education  in some ways, and is also similar to  Mowgli's story in  Rudyard Kipling's  The Jungle Book  as well as  Tarzan's story, in that a baby is abandoned but taken care of and fed by a mother  wolf. [citation needed] Among other innovations in Arabic literature was  Ibn Khaldun's perspective on chronicling past events—by fully rejecting supernatural explanations, Khaldun essentially invented the scientific or sociological approach to history. citation needed] Islam [100 A. D. to 1 500] 1. God's revelations were first received around 610 by the prophet Muhammad, whose followers later collected them into the Koran, which became the basis for a new religion and community known today as Islam. 2. Though most of the pre-Islamic literature of Arabia was written in verse, prose became a popular vehicle for the dissemination of religious learning. 3. As its title â€Å"the Recitation† suggests, the Koran was made to be heard and recited; because it is literally the word of God, Muslims do not accept the Koran in translation from Arabic. . Although Persian literature borrowed from Arabic literary styles, it also created and enhanced new poetic styles, including the  ruba'i  (quatrain),  ghazal  (erotic lyric), and  masnavi  (narrative poem). 5. More widely known than any other work in Arabic, the  Thousand and One Nights  is generally excluded from the canon of classical Arabic literature due to its extravagant and improbable fabrications in pro se, a form that was expected to be more serious and substantial than verse. Thousand and One Nights Myths and Legends of the World |  2001 |  Copyright Thousand and One NightsThousand and One Nights,  also called  The Arabian Nights' Entertainment  or simply  The Arabian Nights,  is a sprawling, centuries-old collection of tales. In the English-speaking world, it is the best-known work of Arabic stories. The framework of the collection is that a king named Shahriyar, distrustful of women, had the habit of taking a new wife every night and killing her the next day. A resourceful young woman named Shahrazad had a plan to end the deadly tradition. After marrying the king, she told him a story on their wedding night with the promise to finish it the next day. He let her live, and she repeated the trick.So captivating were her stories that Shahriyar spared her life again and again in order to hear the rest of the narrative. The origins of  Thousand and One Nights  are u nknown. The oldest bit of Arabic text dates from the 800s; the first lengthy text was written in the 1400s. None of the early Arabic-language texts contains exactly the same stories. Scholars have identified Persian, Baghdadian, and Egyptian elements in the work, which seems to have developed over the years as an ever-changing collection of fairy tales, romances, fables, poems, legends about heroes, and humorous stories.The stories that are best known in the English-speaking world—those of Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin and his Magic Lamp, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves—do not appear in all editions of  Thousand and One Nights. Thousand and One Nights The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. |  2012 |  Copyright Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights, series of anonymous stories in Arabic, considered as an entity to be among the classics of world literature. The cohesive plot device concerns the efforts of Scheherezade, or Sheherazade, to keep her husband, King Shah ryar (or Schriyar), from killing her by entertaining him with a tale a night for 1,001 nights.The best known of these stories are those of Ali Baba, Sinbad the Sailor, and Aladdin. Although many of the stories are set in India, their origins are unknown and have been the subject of intensive scholarly investigation. The corpus began to be collected about the year 1000. At first the title was merely indicative of a large number of stories; later editors dutifully provided editions with the requisite 1,001 tales. The present form of  Thousand and One Nights  is thought to be native to Persia or one of the Arabic-speaking countries, but includes stories from a number of different countries and no doubt reflects diverse source material.The first European edition was a free translation by Abbe Antoine Galland into French (1704–17). Most subsequent French, German, and English versions lean heavily upon Galland. Among the English translations include the expurgated edition of E. W. Lane (1840), with excellent and copious notes; the unexpurgated edition by Sir Richard Burton in 16 volumes (1885–88); that of John Payne in 9 volumes (1882–84); Powys Mathers's translation from the French text of J. C. Mardrus (rev. ed. , 4 vol. , 1937); and that of Husain Haddawy (2 vol. , 1990, 1995).Note: This file is also available as a  Word document. Acknowledgements: Al-Muntazir Madrasah, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. IMPORTANCE OF THE HOLY QUR’AAN The first lesson to be learned by all students is about the importance of the Holy Qur’aan. The Qur’aan is the Book of Allah  subhaanahu wa ta‘aalaa. Every word in the Qur’aan has come from Allah. That is why we say that it is a Holy Book. The words in the Qur’aan were sent by Allah to Prophet Muhammad  sallal-laahu ‘alayhi wa-aalihi wa sallam. The Prophet (s) received the words of Allah through angel Jibra’eel.This Qur’aan is a Holy Book t hat was not written by anyone but sent by Allah to Prophet Muhammad (s) through Jibra’eel. 1. It is the most truthful speech: Prophet Muhammad (s) regularly read the words of Allah to Muslims around him. These Muslims were very pleased and excited to receive the words of Allah. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  The most truthful speech, the most eloquent advice, and the greatest stories are in the Book of Allah. The Muslims listened carefully to what the Prophet read, memorized the sentences and passages of the Qur’aan, recited them regularly and followed the teachings of the Qur’aan.In order to preserve the words of Allah the Prophet appointed special people known as â€Å"Scribes of the Qur’aan† to write down the words of Allah. 2. It is in original language: Prophet Muhammad (s) was an Arab and the majority of people in Mecca and Medina spoke Arabic. Therefore the Qur’aan was sent in Arabic. Arabic is written from right to left. It is better to learn to read the Qur’aan in its original language. Therefore, we will put efforts to learn Qur’aan written in Arabic instead of simply reading its translation in other languages. . The Holy Qur’aan contains Allah’s message to all people. It tells people how to act correctly. It guides us to a correct way of life in this world. The Book of Allah also talks about life after death. It tells us that Allah has prepared Paradise for good people and Hell for bad people. The Qur’aan encourages the worship of only one God Who creates and provides for them. The Book forbids people from evil and condemns those who do wrong. It contains stories of the past Prophets and the examples of bad and good people.People are advised in the Qur’aan to be good to others and respect them. It teaches people to live in peace and harmony. 4. Qur’aan brings happiness in this world and the Hereafter. Following the Qur’aan brings happiness in this world and the world after death. The Prophet (s) said:If you desire the life of the fortunate, the death of a martyr, the salvation on the Day of Regret and the shade on the Day of Extreme Heat, then you should study the Qur’aan because it is the word of the Merciful, a sanctuary from Shaytaan and a causes the tilting of the Balance.In another Hadith we read that the Prophet (s) has said:  The recitor of the Qur’an will be spared from the calamities of the Hereafter. 5. It is the only Divine book that has remained unchanged. Allah sent the Qur’aan to His Prophet. A book sent by Allah to people is known as a Divine Book or a Heavenly Book. Other Divine Books were also sent to previous prophets. These are: Suhoof to Prophet Ibraheem  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam; Zaboor to Prophet Dawood  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam;  Tawraah to Prophet Moosaa  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam; and  Injeel to Prophet ‘Eisaa  Ã¢â‚¬Ëœalayhis salaam.The difference between the Qur’aan an d past revealed books is that the Qur’aan is the only Divine Book that has remained unaltered. The Qur’aan we have with us contains exactly the same message that was sent to Prophet Muhammad by Allah through Jibra’eel. 6. Our supplications get answered  if we were to pray after reading the Holy Qur’aan. The Prophet (s) said:  One who starts the Qur’an and finishes it, Allah will grant him one answered supplication. It also helps in strengthening our faith. Imam Ali (a) said:  Ã‚  Reciting the Qur’an plants the eed of faith. 7. The Qur’aan is the best companion. It can be of great help when a child or adult is feeling lonely. Imam Ali Zaynul ‘Aabideen (a) said:  If all who live between the East and West perish, I will have no fear as long as I have the Qur’an with me. 8. Students get wise  when they start reading the Qur’aan in their childhood. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  Whoever reads the Qur’an before becoming Baaligh, has indeed been given wisdom as a child. The Holy Book is the best intellectual treasure a student can have.Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  The Qur’an is a wealth with which there is no poverty, and without which there is no wealth. On the other hand not caring to read and study the Qur’aan is a great loss. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  Surely the person in whose heart lacks the trace of the Qur’an is like a ruined house. 9. Muslims read the Qur’aan to understand the true teachings of Islam. Prophet Muhammad (s) left the Holy Book and the Ahlul Bayt (a) as the most important legacy for Muslims after him. He said:  I leave tow weighty things among you: The Book of Allah and my family – the Ahlul Bayt.Indeed these two will never separate until they reach me near the pool of Kawthar. 10. All Muslims recite some Soorahs in their prayers. However, it is good to memorize more Soorahs and read them in Salaat. Imam Muhammad Al-Baaq ir (a) said:  Whoever recites the Qur’aan while standing in his prayer, Allah will bestow on him a hundred blessings for every letter; and whoever recites it while sitting in his prayer, Allah will reward him fifty blessings for every letter; and whoever recites it outside of his prayer, Allah will grant him ten blessings for every letter. 1. The Qur’aan is a cure to mental and spiritual diseases: Imam Hasan al-‘Askaree (a) said:  The Messenger of Allah (s) said: I advice you to the Qur’aan since it is the beneficial cure, the blessed medicine, the protection (‘Isma) for he who holds fast to it, and the salvation for he who follows it. Neither does it cause crookedness so that it departs (from the truth) nor does it deviate so that it causes trouble. Its marvels do not come to end and the vastness of refutations does not wear it. RESPECT AND RIGHTS OF THE HOLY QUR’AANNow that we know that the Holy Qur’aan is not an ordinary book, bu t a Divine Book sent by Allah for the guidance of all people, we must show respect to it. Here are some of the points we need to remember. 1. A part of the Qur’aan carries the same respect as the entire Qur’aan. Allah says:  When the Qur’aan is recited, listen to  it (7:204). We know that when recitation takes place it is always of a part of the Qur’aan. Even then Allah uses the word Qur’aan for the part that is being recited. Therefore, if you have a Siparah, a binder or a booklet that contains Soorahs and passages from the Qur’aan, you treat it like a Qur’aan. . The Qur’aan should always be carried with proper care. When your Madrasah bag contains the Qur’aan, or a part of it, take extra care of the bag. Keep the bag slowly on the desk or floor instead of letting it fall on its own. Use both hands to remove the Qur’aan from your bag, kiss the cover of the Qur’aan, place it slowly on a desk (or on a wo oden carrier specially built for holding the Qur’aan) and open the pages gently. 3. When the Qur’aan is being recited, listen to it and be attentive (7:204). If you are busy with something else then at least do not disturb the recitation by talking, for example, or making noise.There is reward for listening to the Qur’aan. Imam Ali Zaynul ‘Aabideen (a) said:  Whoever listens to a letter of the book of Allah, the Glorious and Almighty, without even reading it, Allah will write down for him one good deed, forgive a sin, and raise him a degree. It was the practice of unbelievers in Mecca to make a lot of noise so that others could not listen to the Qur’aan (41:26). Do not be like them and instead lend your ears to the Qur’aan and give it respect. We often wish that God would talk to us. One way to achieve this is by reading the Qur’aan. Prophet Muhammad (s): said:  Lo!Whoever has longing for Allah should listen to the word of Allah! A lso, if you wish to talk to God then do Tilaawa. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  Whenever one of you would like to talk to his Lord, he should read the Qur’an. 4. The Qur’aan should be recited regularly. It is disrespect to keep the Holy Qur’aan unread. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  Brighten your homes with reciting Qur’aan; do not turn them into graves. Surely the house in which a lot of recitation takes place enjoys many blessings and the members benefit from it. Such a household shines for the inhabitants of Heaven as stars shine to the inhabitants of the earth.On the Day of Judgment the Prophet will complain to Allah about some Muslims who had abandoned the Qur’aan (25:30). Another Hadith of the Prophet (s) says:  Indeed hearts rust in the same way irons rust. He was asked: â€Å"What will polish the hearts? † The Prophet answered:  Reading the Qur’an. The more Qur’aan we read the better it is. We should discipline oursel ves to read a good portion of Qur’aan daily. Imam Ali (a) said:  He who recites 100 verses daily from the Book in the order it is in, Allah writes for him the reward equal to all the good actions of every one on this earth.Shaytaan would like us not to read, understand and study the Qur’aan. Let us fight him with all our strength and faith. Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) said:  Ã‚  There is nothing more unpleasant to Shaytaan than to see a man reading the Qur’an to gain insight. 5. Children should get familiarized with the Qur’aan early in their lives. Imam as-Saadiq (AS) said:  He who recites Qur’aan while he is young, Qur’aan mixes with his flesh and his blood, and Allah places him amongst the blessed and the chosen righteous. On the Day of Judgment, Qur’aan shall become his defender and  [pray for him a handsome reward. 6. It is the right and respect of the Qur’aan that it should be followed. Imam Ja‘far Saadi q (a) said:  Ã‚  Lo! One, who learns the Qur’aan, teaches it and practices according to it, I will guide and lead him to Paradise. 7. It is also the right and respect of the Qur’aan that those who have the knowledge of the Qur’aan should teach it to others. This is among the noblest acts. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:  The best of you is he who learns the Qur’an and teaches it. 8. Take the interpretations of the Qur’aan from the Holy Prophet (s) and the Imams from his family, i. e. the Ahlul Bayt (a).Imam Hasan al-‘Askaree quoting Prophet Muhammad said:  Recite it (i. e. the Qur’aan) as Allah gives you ten rewards for each letter that you recite from it. Then the Imam (a) said:  Do you know who really holds fast to it and reaches to such honor and reward? He is the person who takes Qur’aan and its interpretation from us Ahlul-Bayt (a) or from the deputies that we send to our followers, and takes its (interpretation) neither from the opinions of those who argue (on the speech of Allah) nor form the analogy  of  those who compare (different parts of the speech of Allah). . Once you have completed reading your lesson or referring to the Qur’aan then close it gently instead of leaving it open. 2. Do not put another book or any weight above the Qur’aan. The Holy Book should always be kept on the top in a pile of books. 3. It is Haraam (forbidden) to make Najaasaat (impure things like blood and urine) touch the Qur’aan. In the event where the Qur’aan becomes Najis, for instance if it falls in Najis water, it is Waajib (obligatory) to purify it (make it Taahir). 4. Old and worn out copies of the Qur’aan should be disposed in safe places.This includes sending them for recycling, burying them in the earth or casting in rivers. *  Ã‚  *  Ã‚  *  Ã‚  * * MANNERS OF RECITING THE HOLY QUR’AAN By now we know that the Qur’aan is a special book and deserves re spect. Now let us look at some of the manners of reciting the Qur’aan. It is the right of the Tilaawa (recitation of the Qur’aan) that we follow the rules when reciting the Qur’aan. 1. Perform Wudhoo before you prepare to read the Qur’aan. Allah says:  None can touch it (the Qur’aan) save the purified ones  (56:79). Once Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) asked his son Ismaa‘eel to read the Qur’aan. The latter said that he was not in Wudhoo.The Imam said in that case he could recite it but should not touch the writings of the Qur’aan. Therefore, it is advisable to  use a stick or pen to point to the words  or sentences of the Qur’aan you are reading if you are not in Wudhoo. 2. Read Du‘aa before Tilaawa. Reading of the Du‘aa helps to keep our focus and reminds us of what we need to take from the Holy Book. Ma‘soomeen (a) have recommended a number of Du‘aas. The Du‘aa taught by Imam Jaâ⠂¬Ëœfar As-Saadiq (a) appears in this booklet with Qur’aan lessons. 3. Always say  A‘oodhubillaahi minash shaytaanir rajeem  ( ) when you begin reading the Qur’aan. It means: I seek refuge in Allah from the cursed Shaytaan. This is what Allah instructs us to do in Aayah 16:98. 4. Next say  Bismillaahir rahmaanir raheem  ( )  The meaning of this phrase is: In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Whenever Imam Moosaa Al-Kaazim (a) wished to make a point to Haroon Rasheed using Aayaat from the Qur’aan, the Imam would begin with  A‘oodhubillaah . . . followed by  Bismillaah . . . 5. Sit facing Qiblaah when reciting the Qur’aan. Please note that this is the best direction to face.However where it may be difficult or impossible to face Qiblaah when reading the Qur’aan (for example if your desk is facing another direction) then it is all right not to face the Qiblaah. 6. Recite the Qur’aan with Tarteel  as instructed by Allah in Aayah 73:4. This means that we should recite the Qur’aan in a good voice with rhythm instead of plain reading. 7. Recite the Qur’aan slowly  Allah said to the Prophet  do not move your tongue with it (Qur’aan) to make haste therein  (75:16). The aayaat of the Qur’aan should be recited in slow tones with each word being pronounced clearly.The Prophet (s) advised Muslims not be concerned about finishing a Soorah when reciting the Qur’aan. 8. Be Humble when reciting the Qur’aan. The Prophet (s) says that the best recitor is he who is humble when reciting the Qur’aan and realizes his own insignificance. Some people exhibit their insignificance and the awe of talking to Allah through weeping. This is a good sign. Prophet Muhammad (s) said:Eyes that weep when reciting the Qur’an will be shining with delight on the Day of Resurrection. 9. Try to understand the recitation. Holy Qur’aan is a book of Guidance (2:2).It is necessary for us to understand the message Allah sent all people through Prophet Muhammad (s). 10. Read from the Qur’aan by looking at the writings instead of reciting from your memory. In a Hadith from one of our Imams it is said that mere looking at the writings of the Qur’aan carries reward. 11. Interact with the Qur’aan. Imam Ja‘far As-Saadiq (a) says that it is important to react to the aayaat of the Qur’aan when reciting it. When we come across aayaat on Paradise, Mercy and Grace of Allah, Good Outcome in the hereafter, we should hope for these in our hearts.On the other hand if we are reading aayaat that warn us about the punishment, fire, Hell, etc. we should pray to be saved from these. 12. Open your heart and mind to the Qur’aan and ponder over what you read. Allah often invites us to think and ponder over the contents of the Qur’aan. In 47:24 Allah says:  Do they not then think deeply in the Qurâ⠂¬â„¢aan, or are their hearts locked up? 13. Perform Sajdah where required to do so  In the entire Qur’aan there are 15 places where performing of Sajdah is required. At 4 places it is Waajib (obligatory) to do Sajdah if we were to read or listen to these sections of the Qur’aan.For the rest of the places it is Mustahab (recommended) to do Sajdah. 14. Say  Sadqallaahul ‘Aliyyul ‘Azeem  ( ) every time you end a recitation of the Qur’aan. The meaning of this phrase is: Allah, the Sublime, the Great, is truthful in what He has said 15. Read one of the Du‘aas after Tilaawa. The Ma‘soomeen have taught a number of Du‘aas, from these two have been included with Qur’aan lessons. In these Du‘aas, amongst other things, we pray to the Almighty to enlighten us through the Qur’aan and make us follow the teachings of the Qur’aan. THE HOLY QURAN: Islam appeared in the form of a book: the Quran.Muslims, consider the Quran (sometimes spelled â€Å"Koran†) to be the Word of God as transmitted by the Angel Gabriel, in the Arabic language, through the Prophet Muhammad. The Muslim view, moreover, is that the Quran supersedes earlier revelations; it is regarded as their summation and completion. It is the final revelation, as Muhammad is regarded as the final prophet – ‘the Seal of the Prophets. † In a very real sense the Quran is the mentor of millions of Muslims, Arab and non-Arab alike; it shapes their everyday life, anchors them to a unique system of law, and inspires them by its guiding principles.Written in noble language, this Holy Text has done more than move multitudes to tears and ecstasy; it has also, for almost fourteen hundred years, illuminated the lives of Muslims with its eloquent message of uncompromising monotheism, human dignity, righteous living, individual responsibility, and social justice. For countless millions, consequently, it has been the singl e most important force in guiding their religious, social, and cultural lives. Indeed, the Quran is the cornerstone on which the edifice of Islamic civilization has been built.The text of the Quran was delivered orally by the Prophet Muhammad to his followers as it was revealed to him. The first verses were revealed to him in or about 610, and the last revelation dates from the last year of his life, 632. His followers at first committed the Quran to memory and then, as instructed by him, to writing. Although the entire contents of the Quran, the placement of its verses, and the arrangement of its chapters date back to the Prophet, as long as he lived he continued to receive revelations.Consequently, the Holy Text could only be collected as a single corpus – â€Å"between the two covers† – after the death of Muhammad. This is exactly what happened. After the battle of al-Yamamah in 633, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, later to become the second caliph, suggested to Abu Bakr, the first caliph, that because of the grievous loss of life in that battle, there was a very real danger of losing the Quran, enshrined as it was in the memories of the faithful and in uncollated fragments.Abu Bakr recognized the danger and entrusted the task of gathering the revelations to Zayd ibn Thabit, who as the chief scribe of the Prophet was the person to whom Muhammad frequently dictated the revelations in his lifetime. With great difficulty, the task was carried out and the first complete manuscript compiled from â€Å"bits of parchment, thin white stones – ostracae – leafless palm branches, and the memories of men. Later, during the time of ‘Uthman, the third caliph, a final, authorized text was prepared and completed in 651, and this has remained the text in use ever since. The contents of the Quran differ in substance and arrangement from the Old and New Testaments. Instead of presenting a straight historical narrative, as do the Gospels a nd the historical books of the Old Testament, the Quran treats, in allusive style, spiritual and practical as well as historical matters.The Quran is divided into 114 surahs, or chapters, and the surahs are conventionally assigned to two broad categories: those revealed at Mecca and those revealed at Medina. The surahs revealed at Mecca – at the beginning of Muhammad's mission – tend to be short and to stress, in highly moving language, the eternal themes of the unity of God, the necessity of faith, the punishment of those who stray from the right path, and the Last Judgment, when all man's actions and beliefs will be judged.The surahs revealed at Medina are longer, often deal in detail with specific legal, social, or political situations, and sometimes can only be properly understood with a full knowledge of the circumstances in which they were revealed All the surahs are divided into ayahs or verses and, for purposes of pedagogy and recitation, the Quran as a whole i s divided into thirty parts, which in turn are divided into short divisions of nearly equal length, to facilitate study and memorization. The surahs hemselves are of varying length, ranging from the longest, Surah 2, with 282 verses, to the shortest, Surahs 103, 108, and 110, each of which has only three. With some exceptions the surahs are arranged in the Quran in descending order of length, with the longest at the beginning and the shortest at the end. The major exception to this arrangement is the opening surah, â€Å"al-Fatihah,† which contains seven verses and which serves as an introduction to the entire revelation: In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds;The Merciful, the Compassionate; Master of the Day of Judgment; Thee only do we worship, and Thee alone we ask for help. Guide us in the straight path, The path of those whom Thou hast favored; not the path of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray. Non-M uslims are often struck by the range of styles found in the Quran. Passages of impassioned beauty are no less common than vigorous narratives. The sublime â€Å"Verse of the Throne† is perhaps one of the most famous: God – There is no god but He,   The Living. the Everlasting;Slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep; To Him belongs all that is In the heavens and the earth; Who is there that can intercede with Him Save by His leave? He knows what lies before them And what is after them, Nor do they encompass anything of His knowledge Except such as He wills; His Throne extends over the heavens and earth; The preserving of them wearies Him not; He is the Most High, the All-Glorious. Muslims regard the Quran as untranslatable; the language in which it was revealed – Arabic – is inseparable from its message and Muslims everywhere, o matter what their native tongue, must learn Arabic to read the Sacred Book and to perform their worship. The Quran of course is a vailable in many languages, but these versions are regarded as interpretations rather than translations – partly because the Arabic language, extraordinarily concise and allusive, is impossible to translate in a mechanical, word-for-word way. The inimitability of the Quran has crystallized in the Muslim view of i'jaz or â€Å"impossibility,† which holds that the style of the Quran, being divine, cannot be imitated: any attempt to do so is doomed to failure.It must also be remembered that the Quran was originally transmitted orally to the faithful and that the Holy Text is not meant to be read only in silence. From the earliest days it has always been recited aloud or, more accurately, chanted. As a result, several traditional means of chanting, or intoning, the Quran were found side by side. These methods carefully preserved the elaborate science of reciting the Quran – with all its intonations and its cadence and punctuation.As the exact pronunciation was impor tant – and learning it took years – special schools were founded to be sure that no error would creep in as the traditional chanting methods were handed down. It is largely owing to the existence of these traditional methods of recitation that the text of the Quran was preserved without error. As the script in which the Quran was first written down indicated only the consonantal skeleton of the words, oral recitation was an essential element in the transmission of the text.Because the circumstances of each revelation were thought necessary to correct interpretation, the community, early in the history of Islam, concluded that it was imperative to gather as many traditions as possible about the life and actions of the Prophet so that the Quran might be more fully understood. These traditions not only provided the historical context for many of the surahs – thus contributing to their more exact explication – but also contained a wide variety of subsidiary i nformation on the practice, life, and legal rulings of the Prophet and his companions.This material became the basis for what is called the sunnah, or â€Å"practice† of the Prophet – the deeds, utterances, and taqrir (unspoken approval) of Muhammad. Together with the Quran, the sunnah, as embodied in the canonical collections of traditions, the hadith, became the basis for the shari'ah, the sacred law of Islam. Unlike Western legal systems, the shari'ah makes no distinction between religious and civil matters; it is the codification of God's Law, and it concerns itself with every aspect of social, political, economic, and religious life.Islamic law is thus different from any other legal system; it differs from canon law in that it is not administered by a church hierarchy; in Islam there is nothing that corresponds to a â€Å"church† in the Christian sense. Instead, there is the ummah – the community of the believers – whose cohesion is guaranteed by the sacred law. Every action of the pious Muslim, therefore, is determined by the Quran, by precedents set by the Prophet, and by the practice of the early community of Islam as enshrined in the shari'ah.No description, however, can fully capture the overwhelming importance of the Quran to Muslims. Objectively, it is the central fact of the Islamic faith, the Word of God, the final and complete revelation, the foundation and framework of Islamic law, and the source of Islamic thought, language, and action. It is the essence of Islam. Yet it is, in the deeply personal terms of a Muslim, something more as well. In innumerable, almost indescribable ways, it is also the central fact of Muslim life.To a degree almost incomprehensible in the West it shapes and colors broadly, specifically, and totally the thoughts, emotions, and values of the devout Muslim's life from birth to death. ARABIC LITERATURE: The Quran, the primary document of the Islamic faith, is the first Arabic book. Its style, at once vigorous, allusive, and concise, deeply influenced later compositions in Arabic, as it continues to color the mode of expression of native speakers of Arabic, Christian as well as Muslim, both in writing and in conversation. The Quran also largely determined the course of Arabic literature.The earliest Arabic prose came into being not from literary motives, but to serve religious and practical needs, above all the need to fully understand the Islamic revelation and the circumstances of the first Muslim community in the Hijaz. The sayings and actions of the Prophet and his Companions were collected and preserved, at first by memory and then by writing, to be finally collected and arranged by such men as al-Bukhari and Muslim in the ninth century. This material, the hadith, not only provided the basic texts from which Islamic law was elaborated, but also formed the raw material for historians of the early Muslim community.Since each hadith, or â€Å"saying,† is a first-person narrative, usually by an eyewitness of the event described, they have an immediacy and freshness that has come down unimpaired through the centuries. The personalities of the narrators – Abu Bakr, Umar, Aishah, and a host of others are just as vivid as the events described, for the style of each hadith is very personal. The hadith also determined the characteristic form of such works as Ibn Ishaq's Life of the Messenger of God, originally written in the middle of the eighth century.In this book, hadith dealing with the life of the Prophet are arranged in chronological order, and the comments of the author are kept to a minimum. Events are seen through the eyes of the people who witnessed them; three or four versions of the same event are often given, and in each case the â€Å"chain of transmission† of the hadith is given, so that the reader may judge its authenticity. During Umayyad times, a number of historians wrote monographs on specific historical, legal, and religious questions, and in each case these authors seem to have adhered to the hadith method of composition.Although few of the works of these writers have survived in their entirety, enough has been preserved by later incorporation in such vast works as the Annals of al-Tabari to give us an idea not only of their method of composition, but also of their wide-ranging interests. The practice of prefacing a chain of authorities to each hadith led to the compilation of vast biographical dictionaries, like the Book of Classes of the early ninth century author Ibn Said, which includes a biography of the Prophet and a great deal of information on notable personalities in Mecca and Medina during his lifetime.Works such as this allowed readers to identify and judge the veracity of transmitters of hadith; later, the content of biographical dictionaries was broadened to include poets, writers, eminent reciters of the Quran, scientists, and the like. These biographical dictionaries are often lively reading, and are a mine of information about social and political circumstances in the Islamic world. The spread of Islam naturally found chroniclers, such as al-Waqidi, who wrote in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, and al-Baladhuri, who composed his well known Book of the Conquests in the ninth century.These books, like the hadith, were written for practical motives. Al-Waqidi was interested in establishing the exact chronology of the spread of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and adjoining areas, while al-Baladhuri was interested in legal and tax problems connected with the settlement of new lands. Their books nevertheless are classics of their kind and, aside from containing much interesting information, they have passages of great descriptive power.By the ninth century, the method of compiling history from hadith and carefully citing the authorities for each tradition – a process which had resulted in books of unwieldy length – was abandon ed by some authors, like al-Dinawari and al-Ya'qubi, who omitted the chains of transmitters and combined hadith to produce a narrative. The result was greater readability and smaller compass, at the sacrifice of richness and complexity. The works of al-Dinawari and al-Ya'qubi, unlike those of their predecessors, aimed to entertain as well as instruct; they are â€Å"literary† productions.This form of light history reached its apogee in the tenth century in al-Mas'udi's brilliant and entertaining Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, a comprehensive encyclopedia of history, geography, and literature. The literary productions of these men would not, however, have been possible without the careful collections of historical hadith made by their predecessors. Just as the writing of history began from practical rather than literary motives, so the collection and preservation of Arabic poetry was undertaken by scholars with, at first, little interest in its artistic merit.The linguists and exegetes of Kufa and Basra began collecting this poetry in the eighth century because of the light it threw on unusual expressions and grammatical structures in the Quran and the hadith. Editions and commentaries were prepared of the poems of ‘Antarah, Imru al-Qays, and many others, and thus the works of the early poets were preserved for later generations. The Quran a part, poetry has always been considered the highest expression of literary art among the Arabs. Long before the coming of Islam, Bedouin poets had perfected the forms of panegyric, satire, and elegy.Their poetry obeys strict conventions, both in form and content, which indicates that it must have had a long period of development before it was finally committed to writing by scholars. The principal form used by the desert poets was the qasidah or ode, a poem of variable length rhyming in the last syllable of each line. The qasidah begins with a description of the abandoned encampment of the poet's beloved an d goes on to an account of his anguish at her absence and his consuming love for her. The poet then describes an arduous journey across the desert nd ends the qasidah with an appeal to the generosity of his host. Although the subject matter is almost invariable, the language is very complex and of great precision. In the Hijaz during the first century of Islam, contemporary with the first hadith scholars, a group of poets broke with the past and introduced new forms and subjects. Men like ‘Umar ibn Abi Rabi'ah wrote realistic and urbane verse, and a school of poetry which expressed the themes of Platonic love grew up around the poet Jamil ibn Muiammar, better known as Jamil al-‘Udhri.The lives and works of these poets of the Umayyad period are preserved in the entertaining tenth-century anthology by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, the Book of Songs. The Umayyad court in Damascus patronized poets and musicians. It was also the scene of the development of the type of Arabic lite rature called adab. Adab is usually translated as â€Å"belles-lettres,† which is slightly misleading. This literature, at least in its inception, was created to serve the practical end of educating the growing class of government ministers in the Arabic language, manners and deportment, history, and statecraft.Works in Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Greek, and Syriac began to find their way into Arabic at this time. ‘Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahya al-Katib, an Umayyad official, and the creator of this genre, defined its aims as follows: â€Å"Cultivate the Arabic language so that you may speak correctly; develop a handsome script which will add luster to your writings; learn the poetry of the Arabs by heart; familiarize yourself with unusual ideas and expressions; read the history of the Arabs and the Persians, and remember their great deeds. ‘Abd Allah ibn al-Muqaffa', a contemporary of ‘Abd al-Ham id ibn Yahya, translated the history of the ancient kings of Persia into Arab ic, as well as Kalilah wa-Dimnah, an Indian book of advice for princes cast in the form of animal fables. His works are the earliest surviving examples of Arabic art prose and are still used as models in schools throughout the Middle East. By the ninth century, Arabic literature had entered its classical age. The various genres had been defined – adab, history, Quranic exegesis, geography, biography, poetry, satire, and many more.Al-Jahiz was perhaps the greatest stylist of the age, and one of the most original personalities. He wrote more than two hundred books, on every conceivable subject; he was critical, rational, and always amusing. His Book of Animals is the earliest Arabic treatise on zoology and contains very modern-sounding discussions of such things as animal mimetism and biological adaptation. He wrote one of the earliest and best treatises on rhetoric and a large number of amusing essays.By the time of his death at the age of ninety-six he had shown that Arabic p rose was capable of handling any subject with ease. The most gifted of al-Jahiz's contemporaries was probably Ibn Qutaybah, also a writer of encyclopedic learning and an excellent stylist. His Book of Knowledge, a history of the world beginning with the creation, is the earliest work of its kind and later had many imitators. The tenth century witnessed the creation of a new form in Arabic literature, the maqamat. This was the title of a work by al-Hamadhani, called Badi' al-Zaman, â€Å"The Wonder of the Age. His Maqamat (â€Å"Sessions†) is a series of episodes written in rhymed prose concerning the life of Abu al-Fath al-Iskandari, a sort of confidence trickster, who takes on a different personality in each story and always succeeds in bilking his victims. These stories are witty and packed with action, and were immediately popular. Al-Hamadhani was imitated by al-Hariri a hundred years later. Al-Hariri was a linguistic virtuoso, and his Maqamat is filled with obscure word s, alliteration, puns, and wild metaphors.He too was extremely popular, and many learned commentaries were written on his Maqamat. This purely Arab form can most closely be compared with the Spanish picaresque novels, which it may have influenced. Rhymed prose, which had come to be used even in government documents, was employed by Abu al-‘Ala al-Ma'arri in his Message of Forgiveness, one of the best known of Arabic prose works. Al-Ma'arri lived in the eleventh century, leading an ascetic life in his native Syrian village. Blind from the age of four, he possessed a prodigious memory and great intellectual curiosity and skepticism.The Message of Forgiveness is cast in the form of a journey to paradise; the narrator there interrogates the scholars and poets of the past regarding their lives and works, receiving surprising and often ironic responses. The book is an extended critique of literature and philology, and represents a high point of classical Arabic culture. One of the o ther great figures of late classical literature was the poet al-Mutanabbi, whose skill in handling the complex meters of Arabic poetry was probably unsurpassed.His verbal brilliance has always been admired by Arab critics, although it is difficult for those whose native tongue is not Arabic to appreciate it fully. The period between the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258 and the nineteenth century is generally held to be a period of literary as well as political decline for the Arabs. It is true that during these five hundred years Arabic writers were more preoccupied with the preservation of their literary heritage than with the development of new forms and ideas.This is the age of encyclopedias, commentaries, and lexicons. Faced with the massive destruction of books by the invasions of Genghis Khan and Hulagu and later of Tamerlane, scholars compiled digests and abridgments of works that had survived in order to ensure their continued existence. There were also some original w orks, however. Ibn Battutah, the greatest traveler of the Middle Ages, lived in the fourteenth century, and his Travel provide a fascinating picture of the Muslim world, from the islands of the Indian Ocean to Timbuktu.Ibn Khaldun, like Ibn Battutah a native of North Africa, lived in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. His Prolegomena is a work of brilliance and originality; the author analyzes human society in terms of general sociological laws and gives a lucid account of the factors that contribute to the rise and decline of civilizations. Ibn Khaldun's style is innovative, simple, and very personal, and perfectly suited to the expression of his often difficult ideas.This post classical period also saw the composition of popular romances, such as the Romance of ‘Antar, based on the life of the famous pre-Islamic poet; the Romance of the Bani Hilal, a cycle of stories and poems based on the migration of an Arabian tribe to North Africa in the eleventh century ; and many more. These romances could be heard recited in coffee shops from Aleppoto Marrakesh until very recently. The most famous popular work of all, The Thousand and One Nights, assumed its present form during the fifteenth century.A revival of Arabic literature began in the nineteenth century, and coincided with the first efforts of Arabic speaking nations to assert their independence of Ottoman rule. Napoleon, during his brief occupation of Egypt in the late eighteenth century, introduced a printing press with fonts of Arabic type, and Muhammad ‘Ali, ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, initiated a series of projects to modernize Egypt. He encouraged the use of Arabic in schools and government institutions, and established a printing press.Selected Egyptian students were sent to study in France, and on their return assigned to undertake translations of Western technical manuals on agriculture, engineering, mathematics, and military tactics. These works, together with many o f the classics of Arabic literature, were printed at the government press at Bulaq and had a profound impact on intellectuals in the Arab East. Another factor in the literary revival was the swift growth of journalism in Lebanon and Egypt. Starting in the late 1850s, newspapers were soon available through the Middle East.By 1900 well over a hundred and fifty newspapers and journals were being published. These journals had a great influence on the development and modernization of the written Arabic language; their stress on substance rather than style did much to simplify Arabic prose and bring it within the comprehension of everyone. One of the first leaders of the Arabic literary renaissance was the Lebanese writer and scholar Butrus al-Bustani, whose dictionary and encyclopedia awakened great interest in the problems of expressing modern Western ideas in the Arabic language.His nephew Sulayman translated Homer's Iliad into Arabic, thus making one of the first expressions of Wester n literature accessible to the Arabic-reading public. Other writers, such as the Egyptian Mustafa al-Manfaluti, adapted French romantic novels to the tastes of the Arab public, as well as writing elegant essays on a variety of themes. The historical novel, in the hands of Jurji Zaydan, proved immensely popular, perhaps because of the intense interest Arabs have always had in their past, and because of the novelty of a new form.But the first Arabic novel that can rank with European productions is Muhammad Husayn Haykal's Zaynab, set in Egypt and dealing with local problems. Perhaps the greatest figure in modern Arabic literature is Taha Husayn. Blind from an early age, Taha Husayn wrote movingly of his life and beloved Egypt in his autobiography, al-Ayyam, â€Å"The Days. † Taha Husayn was a graduate of both al-Azhar and the Sorbonne, and his voluminous writings on Arabic literature contributed a new critique of this vast subject.The novel was not the only new form introduced to the Arabic-reading public. The drama, first in the form of translations of Western work, then of original compositions, was pioneered by Ahmad Shawqi and came to maturity in the hands of Tawfiq al-Hakim. Tawfiq al-Hakim's long career and devotion to the theater did much to make this one of the liveliest arts of the Middle East. The history of modern Arabic poetry, with its many schools and contending styles, is almost impossible to summarize. Traditional forms and subjects were challenged by ‘Abbas Mahmud al-‘Aqqad,Mahmud Shukri, and Ibrahim al-Mazini, who strove to introduce nineteenth-century European themes and techniques into Arabic, not always with success. Lebanese poets were in the forefront of modernist verse, and one of them, Gibran Kahlil Gibran, proved very popular in the West. Poets are now experimenting with both old and new techniques, although discussions of form have given way to concern for content. The exodus of Palestinians from their native land ha s become a favorite theme, often movingly handled.In Saudi Arabia, it was not until well into the twentieth century that literary movements in neighboring lands made themselves felt. Poetry, of course, has been cultivated in Arabia since the pre-Islamic period, and it has lately been influenced by new forms and subjects. Hasan al-Qurashi, Tahir Zamakhshari, Hasan Faqi, and Mahrum (the pen name of Amir ‘Abd Allah al-Faysal) have won renown for their poetry throughout the Arab world. Hasan Faqi's poetry is introspective and philosophical, while the verse of the three others is lyrical and romantic.Ghazi al-Gosaibi is distinguished by a fresh, fecund imagination that expresses itself in both Arabic and English verse. Two novels by the late Hamid al-Damanhuri have been well received. They are Thaman al-Tadhiyah, â€Å"The Price of Sacrifice,† and Wa-Marrat al-Ayyam, â€Å"And the Days Went By. † With the rapid increase in education and communications, presses are now beginning to publish more and more works by writers, and it can certainly be expected that the great social changes that are taking place will eventually be reflected in equally far-reaching developments in the Arabic literature. Introduction â€Å"Read in the Name of your Lord†. [1] These were the first few words of the Qur'an revealed to the   Prophet Muhammad over 1400 years ago. Muhammad, who was known to have been in retreat and   meditation in a cave outside Mecca [2], had received the first few words of a book that would have a   tremendous impact on the world of Arabic literature. [3] Not being known to have composed any piece   of poetry and not having any special rhetorical gifts, [4] Muhammed had just received the beginning of a   book that would deal with matters of belief, legislation, international law, olitics, ritual, spirituality, and   economics [5] in an ‘entirely new literary form'. Armstrong states, â€Å"It is as though Muhammad had c reated an entirely new literary form†¦Without this experience of the   Koran, it is extremely unlikely that Islam would have taken root. † [6] This unique literary form was the cause of the dramatic intellectual revival of desert Arabs [7], and after   thirteen years of the first revelation, it became the only reference for a new state in Medina. [8] This new   form of speech, the Qur'an, became the sole source of the new civilisation's political, philosophical,   and spiritual outlook.It is well known amongst Muslim and Non-Muslim scholars that the Qur’anic discourse cannot be   described as any of the known forms of Arabic speech; namely Poetry and Prose. [9] Taha Husayn, [10] a prominent Egyptian Litterateur, during the course of a public lecture summarised   how the Qur’an achieves this unique form: â€Å"But you know that the Qur’an is not prose and that it is not verse either. It is rather Qur’an, and it cannot   be called by any other name but this. It is not verse, and that is clear; for it does not bind itself to the   bonds of verse.And it is not prose, for it is bound by bonds peculiar to itself, not found elsewhere;   some of the binds are related to the endings of its verses and some to that musical sound which is all   its own. It is therefore neither verse nor prose, but it is â€Å"a Book whose verses have been perfected the   expounded, from One Who is Wise, All-Aware. † We cannot therefore say its prose, and its text itself is   not verse. It has been one of a kind, and nothing like it has ever preceded or followed it. † [11] Any expression of the Arabic language falls into the literary forms of Prose and Poetry.There are other   ‘sub’ forms that fall into the above categories. Kahin, which is a form of rhymed prose, is one of these   ‘sub’ forms; but all literary forms can be described as prose and poetry. Poetry Arabic Poetry is a form of metrical speech with a rhyme. [12] The rhyme in Arabic poetry is achieved by   every line of the poem ending upon a specific letter. [13] The metrical aspect of Arabic poetry is due to   its rhythmical divisions, these divisions are called ‘al-Bihar’, literally meaning ‘The Seas’ in Arabic. This term has been used to describe the rhythmical divisions as a result of the way the poem moves   according to its rhythm.In Arabic poetry there are sixteen rhythmical patterns, which all of Arabic poetry adheres too or is   loosely based upon; 1. at-Tawil 2. al-Bassit 3. al-Wafir 4. al-Kamil 5. ar-Rajs 6. al-Khafif 7. al-Hazaj 8. al-Muttakarib 9. al-Munsarih 10. al-Muktatab 11. al-Muktadarak 12. al-Madid 13. al-Mujtath 14. al-Ramel 15. al-Khabab 16. as-Saria' Each one of the al-Bihar have a unique rhythmical division. [14] The al-Bihar were first codified in the   8th century by al-Khalil bin Ahmad and have changed little since. The al-Bihar are based o n the length   of syllables.A short syllable is a consonant followed by a short vowel. A long syllable is a vowelled   letter followed by either an unvowelled consonant or a long vowel. A nunation sign at the end of a word   also makes the final syllable long. In Arabic poetry each line is divided into two halves. Below are basic scansions of the metres commonly found in Arabic poetry, showing long (—) and   short (^) syllables. They represent pairs of half-lines and should be read from left to right. The patterns   are not rigidly followed: two short syllables may be substituted for a long one. Tawil — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | ^ — — | Kamil ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | ^ ^ — ^ — | Wafir ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ à ¢â‚¬â€ ^ ^ — | ^ — — | ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ — ^ ^ — | ^ — — | Rajaz — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ — | Hazaj ^ — — — | ^ — — — | ^ — — — | ^ — — — | Basit — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | Khafif — ^ — — | — — ^ — | — ^ — — | — ^ — — | — — ^ — | — ^ — — | Sari' — — ^ — | — — ^ — | — ^ — | — — ^ — | — — ^ â₠¬â€ | — ^ — | [For more details on the al-Bihar please see  www. theinimitablequran. om/TheRhythmicalPatterns. html ] An example of an Arabic poem, is the ancient Arabian poem called ‘Abu-l-‘Ata of Sind’: Of thee did I dream, while spears between us were quivering And sooth, of our blood full drop had drunken the tawny shafts! I know not, by heaven I swear, and true is the word I say This pang, is it love sickness, or wrought by a spell from thee. If it be a spell, then grant me grace of my love-longing If other the sickness be, then none is the guilt of thine. [15] This poem, in the original Arabic, falls into the rhythmical pattern of Tawil, one of the al-Bihar shown   above. 16] A literary analysis on any Arabic Poem will conclude that it adheres too or is based upon   the rhythmical patterns. This is supported by Louis Cheikho who collected pre-Islamic and Islamic   poetry and concluded that all of the poems conformed and were based upon the al-Bihar. [17] Prose Arabic Prose can be called non-metrical speech, meaning it does not have a rhythmical pattern like   poetry mentioned above. Arabic prose can be further divided into two categories; Saj’ which is rhymed   prose and Mursal which is straight prose or what some may call ‘normal speech’. [18] An apt description of Saj’ is, in the words of Von Deffer: A literary form with some emphasis on rhythm and rhyme, but distinct from poetry. Saj’ is not really as   sophisticated as poetry, but has been employed by Arab poets, and is the best known of the pre- Islamic Arab prosodies. It is distinct from poetry in its lack of metre, i. e. it has not consistent rhythmical   pattern, and it shares with poetry the element of rhyme, though in many cases some what irregularly   employed. † [19] Mursal can be defined as a literary form that goes on and is not divided, but is continued straight   throughout without any divisions, either of rhyme or of anything else. 20] Mursal is meant as a way of   expression close to the everyday spoken language, examples can be seen in speeches and prayers   intended to encourage or motivate the masses. The Qur’ans Literary Form The Qur’anic discourse cannot be described as any of the known literary forms. The most predominant   opinion is that it doesn’t adhere to any of the rules known to poetry and prose. Another opinion is that   the Qur’an combines metrical and non-metrical composition to create its own literary form. Some   scholars disagree with the above opinions and claim that the Qur’an is a form of rhymed prose, saj’.This opinion has arisen mainly due to the similarities of pre-Islamic prose and early Meccan chapters   of the Qur’an. However, the scholars who carry this opinion do not contend that the Qur’an is unique by   its use of literary and stylistic elements that render it inimitable. This unique use of literary elements   has not been found in any Arabic Prose, past or present. Below is an explanation, with reference to the main opinions above, on how the Qur’an achieves its   unique inimitable form. Non-compliance to the Rules of Prose or PoetryThe Qur’anic literary form differs as it does not fit in to any of the literary categories explained above,   [21] it is not like the prose of Saj’ or Mursal and it doesn't fit into any of the al-Bihar. This can be seen by   the following example: Wad Duha wal laili idha saja Ma waddaka Rabbuka wa maa qala Wa lal akhiraatu khairul laka minal oola Wa la sawfa ya teeka Rabbuka fa tarda†¦ By the morning hours and by the night most still Your Lord has neither forsaken you nor hates you And indeed the hereafter is better for you than the present And verily your Lord will give you so that you shall be well pleased†¦ [22]The examination of the whole chapter with reference to the above lit erary forms indicates that it is not   Saj’ or Mursal as this verse has an internal rhythm, whereas Saj’ does not have a consistent rhythm   and Mursal has no rhythm or rhyme. Also it cannot be described as poetry; the totality of this chapter, or   any other chapter for that matter, does not adhere to any of the al-Bihar. Unique Fusion of Metrical and non-Metrical Speech Some parts of the Qur’an follow the rules of poetry, that is, some verses can be described as one of   the al-Bihar. 23] When the totality of a Qur’anic Chapter, that contains some these verses is analysed,   it is not possible to distinguish its literary form. â€Å"The Qur'an is not verse, but it is rhythmic. The rhythm of some verses resemble the regularity of saj’ †¦But it was recognized by Quraysh critics to belong to neither one nor the other category. † [24] The Qur’an achieves this unique literary form by intermingling metrical and non-Metrical speech in   such a way that the difference can not be perceived. [25] This intermingling of metrical and non- metrical composition is present throughout the whole of the Qur’an.The following examples illustrate   this, â€Å"But the righteous will be in Gardens with Springs – ‘Enter in Peace and Safety! ’ – and We shall   remove any bitterness from their hearts: [they will be like] brothers, sitting on couches, face to face. No   weariness will ever touch them there, nor will they ever be expelled. [Prophet] tell My servants that I am   the Forgiving, the Merciful, but My torment is the truly painful one. Tell them too about Abraham’s   guests: when they came to him and said â€Å"Peace,† he said, ‘We are afraid of you’† [26]When reading the original Arabic of the above verse the reader moves from metric composition to   prose with out experiencing the slightest change of style or mode. [27] The same mingling of metrical   and non-metrical composition