Addendum to the benefits of the hadith of Umm Hisham, the daughter of Harith ibn al-Nu'man, who said: "Indeed, our oven and the oven of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) were one for two years or one year"

The Shaykh : The beginning of this surah is , . Qaf is from the letters of the alphabet. Does it have a meaning in itself or not? The correct view is that it does not. It has no meaning in itself. Now, if someone were to say: "Allah knows best whether it has a meaning in itself or not," would that be safe? Is it safe to attribute the knowledge of the letters of the alphabet to Allah, or not? Most scholars say: "Allah knows best what He intended," even though some exegetes who interpret the Qur'an through symbols consider these to be symbols for specific things they identify. However, the safest course is to say: "It has no meaning in itself; in itself, it has no meaning." If someone asks: "What is the evidence?" we say: Because Allah the Exalted said: , and He said: . The Arabic language requires that these letters have no meaning in themselves. So we say what the Qur'an indicates. Then, if we said: "Allah knows best what He intended, and no one knows what is meant by this," then there would remain in the Qur'an things whose meaning the community does not know, and this is impossible. There is nothing in the Qur'an whose meaning people will never know. Allah the Exalted said: . However, Shaykh al-Islam and before him al-Zamakhshari and others mentioned that it has a purport, which is that this Qur'an that has baffled you, O Arabs, is composed of the very letters you speak. For this reason, you hardly find a surah beginning with these letters without a mention of the Qur'an following it. And this is the truth, if Allah wills.