Signs & Miracles · A Book Unlike Their Books
What the poets of Mecca said
Handle with care. Do not present the al-Walid narration as a sahih hadith. It is early biographical material — say that.
In short
- 1.Al-Walid ibn al-Mughirah was sent to find a label for it and could not.
- 2.He said it has sweetness, is graceful, and is not the speech of a man.
- 3.He settled on calling it magic — because they had to call it something.
- 4.This is a historical report from the early biography, not a hadith in the strict collections.
The claim being examined
The recorded reaction of the Qur'an's first opponents is not that it was ordinary, but that it was unsettlingly powerful.
The Islamic position
Their own verdicts, preserved in the early biography, testify against the claim that the Qur'an is plain human speech.
Analysis
The al-Walid report is transmitted in Ibn Ishaq's Sirah (via Ibn Hisham) and in tafsir literature on Surah al-Muddaththir, which itself responds to a hostile deliberation about how to describe the recitation. Q 74:18-25 is contemporaneous and independent of the biographical report. State the transmission type accurately: it is early historical material, valuable but not of the same grade as a report in Bukhari, and saying so protects you when a well-read listener checks.
From the Qur'an
Qur'an 74:24-25
فَقَالَ إِنْ هَٰذَا إِلَّا سِحْرٌ يُؤْثَرُ
And he said: this is nothing but magic handed down; this is nothing but the word of a human being.
Sources
Ibn Ishaq / Ibn Hisham, al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah · al-Qurtubi, al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an, on Q 74 · Ibn Hisham, al-Sirah; Q 74:18-25
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