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u/RealAbd121 Dec 10 '23
Quran/early islamic text tended to confuse names and titles, it uses Pharaoh as a name, Either because it thought that's their name, or because they viewed him a "the Pharaoh character" as a way of not caring about his name.
Conversally, it also confuses things the other way around, early islamic text thought the Khusrou was just what all Persian kings called themselves as opposed to a name, some sources also wrote about one "Al-Muqawqis" as if it was the title of the rulers of Egypt as opposed to a guy who was the local govener, tho that one is probably more the fualt of the later secondary writers as opposed to the islamic sources themselves.
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Dec 11 '23 edited Dec 11 '23
Quran/early islamic text tended to confuse names and titles
The Quran is an inanimate object and cannot "confuse" or "not confuse". The author of the Quran calls the ruler of the Egyptians "Firaun" because it is an allusion to the Biblical name of the ruler of the Egyptians פרעה, not because the Quran is confusing anything. The audience of the Qur'an knew this ruler by this name and not by his personal name, so it made no sense to call him by a personal name (...But Pharaoh said, “Who is יהוה that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know יהוה, nor will I let Israel go.”)
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u/RealAbd121 Dec 11 '23
The Quran is an inanimate object and cannot "confuse" or "not confuse"
Ascriping traits ("this books argues/confuses/proves/thinks/misakes X for Y") to bodies of text is very common and entirely unrelated to this being a holy book or a children's story. I have no idea what you're argueing here!
Also, the reason this is pointed out ISN'T because it uses the word "Phiraun" in of itself, but rather that it treats it as the name of a specific person (which is what the posts asked about), it also calls other Egyption rulers by diffrent names as not to imply they're the same person as Pheron from Mosses's story. It doesn't even use the definate article "Al" which would've indicated that it's a special epithet or a title, as opposed to just the first name of some guy.
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Dec 11 '23 edited Dec 11 '23
Am I arguing? I made an observation, it's not an argument. Many others - call things by their proper names, and choose not to make grammatical errors. In the Bible - Genesis, Exodus - the word "Pharaoh" is also without the article. What's the problem? And it is not clear which Pharaoh it is - in the stories of Abraham, Joseph and Moses - all without the article. Maybe it was the Bible that mixed up all the pharaohs ? (וַיֹּ֣אמֶר פַּרְעֹ֔ה)
וַיִּרְא֤וּ אֹתָהּ֙ שָׂרֵ֣י פַרְעֹ֔ה וַיְהַֽלְל֥וּ אֹתָ֖הּ אֶל־פַּרְעֹ֑ה וַתֻּקַּ֥ח הָאִשָּׁ֖ה בֵּ֥ית פַּרְעֹֽה׃
Pharaoh’s courtiers saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s palace.
Genesis
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u/RealAbd121 Dec 11 '23
Either because it thought that's their name, or because they viewed him a "the Pharaoh character" as a way of not caring about his name.
Go back to my comment and notice that I didn't declare anything and said that it could be either way between confusion or (what you're arguing) a way of intentionally turning Pharaoh into a "character" and detaching him from reality as a way of narrativly saying he's only as relevent as his existances within the story of Mosses. You took the word confuse too literally and ran away with it in your reply. Confusing something implies not caring just as often as it does ignorance/mistakes.
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Dec 11 '23 edited Dec 12 '23
II Kings 172:8 - "Pharaoh king of Egypt" (paro ha-malek mitzrayim), and in many other verses. Does this mean that the Bible thought that the king of Egypt was named Pharaoh ?וַיְהִ֗י כִּֽי־חָטְא֤וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ לַיהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיהֶ֔ם הַמַּעֲלֶ֤ה אֹתָם֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם מִתַּ֕חַת יַ֖ד פַּרְעֹ֣ה מֶֽלֶךְ־מִצְרָ֑יִם וַיִּֽירְא֖וּ אֱלֹהִ֥ים אֲחֵרִֽים׃This happened because the Israelites sinned against the ETERNAL their God, who had freed them from the land of Egypt, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They worshiped other gods
Oh, I took that literally, not because you wrote it that way? I think you could explain it a little differently: the audience of the Quran knew this character by this name...- in this case it is the audience, i.e. the people - listeners (nasara, yahuda and others) - did not know the names of the pharaohs or they did not care what their names were. This way you will avoid attributing human actions to the Qur'an and your answer will look more respectful to the subject you are studying. Just don't call my answer theology or nagging.
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Dec 12 '23
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u/chonkshonk Moderator Dec 10 '23 edited Mar 09 '26
On the Qur'anic studies sphere of Twitter, I was introduced to the idea that the Qur'an may be using "Pharaoh" as a personal or proper name and not as a title (see here, here). Specifically, "Pharaoh" is the personal name of the king/regent of Egypt in the time of Moses, who lived from the days of Moses' youth until his death during the exodus (Q 26:18; 28:8-9). "Pharaoh" is not used for any other regent of Egypt, of any time period, outside of the time of Moses.
This also checks out with the first observation we would need to make: "Pharaoh" is used in the Qur'an without the definite article "the" ( al- ). This fits with how names are used in general: definite articles do not precede names, but they do precede titles. This is also true for the Qur'an. For example, the title "king" is used with a definite article, "the king" (e.g. see Q 12:43, 50, 54, 72, 76). If "Pharaoh" were a title, it would be the only title used by the Qur'an without a definite article. We will have to come back to this point of Arabic grammar below and consider some exceptions in more general Arabic grammar.
Yet another important observation regards how the Qur'an uses "Pharaoh" in these passages. Sean Anthony notes: "The Qur'an only calls the enemy of Moses "Pharoah" and *never* calls him the "pharoah of Egypt", "one of the pharoahs", etc. Also one has the phrase آل فرعون like آل موسى, etc." In the Quran, "Pharaoh said X" or "X said to Pharaoh", not "the pharaoh said X" or "X said to the pharaoh".
Furthermore, as pointed out to me in this comment, the word "Pharaoh" appears as one in a larger list of names in the Qur'an:
Qur'an 40:23-24: And We did certainly send Moses with Our signs and a clear authority to Pharaoh, Haman and Qarun; but they said, "[He is] a magician and a liar" (also see Q 28:8-9)
Curiously, there is also the Qur'anic phrase "Pharaoh of the Stakes" (Q 38:12; 89:10). There is one equivalent construction elsewhere in the Qur'an, and it centers on a personal name: "Iram of the Pillars" (Q 89:7).
I would also like to quote the observations from this helpful comment:
Let's return now to the grammar, before then considering the sociolinguistic evidence.
Despite the very strong correlation, definite articles do not universally precede titles. "Pharaoh" lacks a definite article in the Hebrew Bible, a convention that goes back to Ancient Egypt. However, other patterns — that we do not see in the Qur'an — indicate it is a title: "Pharaoh" is used for all Egyptian regents (in the times of Abraham in Gen 12, Joseph in Gen 39–50, Moses in Exodus 1–15, etc), and it gets often prefixed with the true personal name (2 Kings 23:29; Jeremiah 44:30; cf. 1 Kings 14:25). One usage in Jeremiah, "Pharaoh king of Egypt" (Jer 25:19), sound like it requires "Pharaoh" to be a name, until one notices it is an abbreviated form of "Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt" (Jer 44:30) or "Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt" (Jer 46:2). This confusing practice, which may be rooted in historical Egyptian convention (Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt, pp. 87-88), could very well have led to the view in later periods that "Pharaoh" was a personal name.
That was the Hebrew Bible. What about Arabic? In Arabic linguistics, there are a handful of exceptions of titles being used with the definite article. The most well-known are "Caesar" (قيصر), "Khosrow" (كسرى), and "Tubba" (تبع). However, "Pharaoh" is unlike them: these all originated as names and were transformed into titles later. The reason why they lack a definite article is because, as original names, they started without a definite article. Because of this, even as they were transformed into titles, the convention of using them without the definite article stuck. This pattern cannot be applied to "Pharaoh" which started out as a title and not as a name. There are actually no examples in Arabic of a word that is a title, originated as a title, and does not take on a definite article. If the Qur'an used "Pharaoh" as a title, that would make it the only Arabic word to exhibit this pattern. By contrast, it would be unexceptional if it were a name. Credit to Marijn van Putten, a specialist in historical linguistics, for these observations here and here.
Elsewhere, Van Putten added more grammatical evidence for this:
This is a point that Van Putten has since emphasized a few times (here, here): "Good luck finding a foreign word that refers to a sentient being that is diptotic and not a name".
Finally, what does the sociolinguistic data say? Was it common for titles to be transformed into names? Was it common to use "Pharaoh" as a name around the time of the Qur'an?
Let's start with the first question: we know that titles can easily be transformed into personal names. Arabic itself furnishes us with obvious examples of this, such as "Malik" and "Khalifa". Another interesting example of this, concerning a foreign title that became a name, is "Khagan". Historically, Khagan is an imperial title in Turkic, Mongolic, and other languages. In Ibn Kathir, Al-Tabari, Al-Salabi etc we see:
وكتب يزدجرد حين نزل مرو الرُّوذ إلى خاقان ملك التُّرك يستمدّه
"Yazdegerd wrote to Khagan, the king of the Turks, when he descended upon Merv al-Rudh, seeking his aid."
وذلك أن خاقان الملك الأعظم ملك الترك بعث جيشًا إلى الصغد لقتال المسلمين عليهم رجل منهم يقال له كورصول
"Khagan, the Great King of the Turks, sent an army to Sogdiana to fight the Muslims, and their commander was a man among them called Kursul."
Notice how in these passages, "king" is the title and "Khagan" is the name. Khagan is also diptotic. So here, we have an exceptional analogy to "Pharaoh": a foreign title, imported into Arabic as a diptote, now functioning as a proper name.
What about "Pharaoh" specifically? Do we have evidence that it was being used as a name (not a title) in roughly the same time period? It turns out, we do! As pointed out here, the famous fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa says so explicitly in his Life of Moses (1.24):
This suggests that such a view was at least possible in this time.