affirmation, that would be no more conclusive than the transmission of the Quran from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, by the Muslims as a whole. If, despite this, some Muslims may suppose that a particular meaning was intended by it when it was not, such a supposition is all the more likely on the part of these scholars concerning what they transmit from the Arabs.
(The fifth): Even supposing that they said this, they are individual transmitters whose reports do not establish mass transmission. “Mass transmission” requires the same conditions to hold at the beginning, the intervening stages, and the end of transmission. Where, then, is the mass transmission from all the Arabs before the revelation of the Quran, attesting that they knew no meaning for faith other than affirmation?
If it is said, “This undermines knowledge of the language before the revelation of the Quran,” the answer is: So be it. Given the Messenger’s explanation of the Quran with which Allah sent him, we have no need to know the language as it existed before the Quran was revealed. The Quran was revealed in the language of Quraysh, and those it addressed were Arabs who understood its intended meaning: they were the Companions. The Companions then conveyed the Quran’s wording and meaning to the Successors, until it reached us. We therefore no longer need that language to reach us through mass transmission independently of the mass transmission of the Quran.
Rather, since the Quran has reached us through mass transmission in both wording and meaning, and we know that it was revealed in their language, we know that their language contained the words “sky,” “earth,” “night,” “day,” “sun,” “moon,” and the like, with the meanings they bear in the Quran. Otherwise, if we were required to produce mass-transmitted evidence independent of the Quran for each of these words, we would be unable to do so for all of them—especially if we were required to establish that all the Arabs intended this particular meaning by a given word, for that is impossible to ascertain. Knowledge of the Quran’s meanings does not depend on any of this. Rather, the Companions conveyed the meanings of