nadhîr in the
Old Arabic poetry
To the pre-Islamic ("jahîlî") poet `Antarah
the following poem is attributed:[1]
وكم من
نذير قد أتانا
محذّر
فكان
رسل في
آلسّرور
يبشّر
"Wa kam min nadhîrin qad atânâ
muHadhdhirâ
fa kâna
rasûlan fî s-surûri yabaššira."
"And how many devoted [or
dedicated or sacred] ones [meaning: ascetes, apostles,
preachers or missionaries or people like that] have come to us frightening [us],
but he was a messenger in joy that he should
announce."
The a bit unusual order of the
words "fî s-surûri
yabaššira" instead of
" yabaššira fî
s-surûri" is due to the necessity to fulfil
the metre Tawîl.
Also here in this (alleged) Old
Arabic poem there is no idea of nadhîr meaning
"warner"!
The verse was most probably part of
a Christian poem, praising Jesus
as the messenger of joy (n. b. بشّر baššara "to announce a
joyful message" and بشرى bušrâ or بشارة bišârah "Gospel"), in contrast
to other preachers who have frightened people with awful messages.[2]
[1] I
owe the hint to this poem to Asif Iqbal,
who gave as source of the poem: Dîwân, p. 85, verse
5. Iqbal, who presented this poem
first within the Yahoo!Group
"Talking about Islam", now has repeated his erroneous arguments
within the website “Bismika Allahuma” or more
precisely at the site “The
Furqan & “The Warner”: Correcting Christoph Heger’s Misinterpretation of Qur’an
25:1”. Whereas Iqbal in the
meantime has corrected his defective and partly wrong transliteration, he
insists on his "translation", which in its verbosity and fancifulness
has no basis in the Arabic text: «How many times has a warner who has come to bid us be on our guard against
something bad, Turned out ultimately to be a messenger of delightful things
bringing a good news.» This his attempt to save the
later Islamic alteration of the meaning of "nadhîr"
from "voted thing", "voted gift", "sacrifice" to
"warner" remains however futile.
[2] I owe thanks to Dr. Günter Lüling,