The Words | 25. Word | 384
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Third Point: This is the wonderful uniqueness of its style. Indeed, the Qur'an's style is both strange, and original, and wonderful, and convincing. It has imitated nothing and no one. And no one has been able to imitate it. Its style has always preserved the freshness, youth, and singularity it possessed when it was first revealed and continues to preserve it. For instance, the unique style of the cipher-like muqatta'at, the 'disjointed letters,' like, Alif. Lam. Mim., Alif. Lam. Ra., Ta. Ha., Ya. Sin., Ha. Mim. 'Ayn. Sin. Qaf., at the beginning of some of the Suras. We have described five or six of the flashes of miraculousness they comprise in Isharat al-I'jaz.

For example, these letters at the start of certain Suras have taken half of each category of the many well-known categories of letters, like the emphatic letters (Kaf', Qaf, Ta, Alif, Jim, Dal, Ta, Ba), the sibilants, the stressed letters, the soft letters, the labiolinguals, and tremolo (qalqala) letters (Qaf, Ta, Dal, Jim, Ba). Taking more than half from the light letters and less than half from the heavy letters, neither of which are divisible, it has halved every category. Although the human mind would be capable of it, halving all those categories overlapping one within the other, hesitant among two hundred possibilities, in the only way possible, which was hidden to the human mind and unknown to it, and organizing all the. letters on that way, over that broad distance, was not the work of the human mind. And chance could not have interfered in it. Thus, in addition to these letters at the beginning of the Suras —Divine ciphers— displaying five or six similar flashes of miraculousness, scholars versed in the mysteries of the science of letters and the authorities from among the saints deduced many secrets from these 'disjointed letters.' They discovered such truths that they declared that on their own these letters form a brilliant miracle. Since we are not party to their secrets and also we cannot provide proofs clear to everyone, we cannot open that door. We shall therefore suffice with referring readers to the explanation in Isharat al-I'jaz of five or six flashes of miracu-lousness related to them.

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