Peace Farabi and Alkitab , Thanks for your comments.
Peace Wakas
Initially I thought I wouldn?t respond to your rant since you are too hasty with the Quran and you don?t seem to know even simple things, a 10 year old would know and what these kids do in the science lab. But for the benefit of others who did not understand fully the reasoning in the first post, let me explain further and present more evidence to the fact that the Quran does not require us to rub dust on our faces.
Where you come from, or anywhere for that matter do people clean themselves with soil or earth?. I don?t understand why you would put tomato ketchup and mustard on your face and then try to clean using soil and also encourage others to do the same. I hope no one here is buying your cleaning tips. If that?s not the case free minds would be one dirty place. Didn't understand what bodily fluids are you talking about? ( don?t know what is natron you mentioned either)
Hygiene , Toxins , Microorganism and contaminants
Do you honestly think cleaning with soil is the proper and the hygienic way of cleaning ? In your confusion you are asking me to bring evidence to invalidate that cleaning with soil is unhygienic. I think that argument was settled 150 years ago by the likes of Louis Pasteur and the use of microscopes.
It was mentioned earlier too that dust is a by-product i.e. faeces produced by dust mites, creatures too tiny to be seen with our naked eye , by consuming and digesting human and animal skin hair etc. Can this dust be used, with Lanes inclusion, for this cleaning as thayyaban ? How would earlier people could have known about the origin of house hold dust ?
As Farabi stated, take agricultural soil for instance, beside the wetness, the toxic chemical fertilisers, fungicides, pesticides, germicides, chemical sprays against weed are all part of the soil and even organic fertilisers etc is made out of waste / trash including sewage, and part of the soil. Does this qualify as thaiyaban ?
Most of you know about blindness caused by ring worms etc introduced to the soil from dog and cat urine and these parasites cannot be seen by the naked eye. And lot of toxins and chemicals are disposed on the seemingly safe soil around us polluting the soil, for instance in many places in the world still CFL bulbs are disposed unsafely even smashed in their own backyards with the resultant mercury poisoning . Now, how do you determine if its thayyaban /good for rubbing on your face for salat or to clean tomato ketchup off your face.
Good and bad vapour ? You can extract water vapour from a dead animal , raw sewage and many other things . Now is this good or bad ? If we flush the toilet without the seat down , we introduce water vapour into the toilet with a splash. This is not good too. ( Ladies are right every time they tell men to put that seat down)
Understanding Quran solely through Lexcions or the Quran explains itself
We can?t base arguments on the premise that it?s in Lanes lexicon therefore it is correct or to the contrary. We must apply time and effort with the Quran to correctly understand it.
We must understand these Lexicons were compiled at least 1000 years after the Messenger and a lexicon is a compilation of words and phrases both written and oral, in the vocabulary of a people of a certain language, at the time of compiling. And languages undergo change and in 1000 years they undergo massive change. Accepting Hadith written 200 years after the Messenger, as a source, to explain and interpret the Quran is bad enough and using a Lexicon written 1200 years after the Quran to do the same is worse. And to accept that the vocabulary of a people remained unchanged without corruption for 1200 years is, extreme foolishness.
In terms of a word in the Quran , there is no guarantee a Lexicon will give the exact meaning every time and there are times when only the remnants of the meaning exist and some situations, the meaning is completely lost. Fortunately with Saaeedan the remnants of the meaning survived. This is not a criticism of Lanes or any other lexicon or dictionary for that matter, it is coming to terms with the real contents of such books and the unwise course of using them alone, to understand the Quran, discarding the built in dictionary and the logic in the Quran.
Dictionaries and lexicons are important tools in understanding the Arabic language and the Quran. But the Quran can be and should be used as its own dictionary to interpret and understand. Almost every time, within the Quran the words and roots are used in such a way to bring out the exact core meaning , with repetitions. This is the principle of, some parts of the Quran explain the other parts. It?s a wonder in itself, for anyone who like to study the Quran in detail and deeply. Are we to believe that God sent a book without explanations built in, but at the sole mercy of relying on books written 150years or 1200 years later ?
Further, lexicon will give the traditional meaning of a Quranic word without inquiry. Take the Kaaba entry under root Kaaf-Ayn-Ba, all meanings developed to associate the word to the cubic structure in Mecca will be included in the entry and also words later developed in relation to that. Often true meaning will all but lost in a 1000 year period due to competition from distorted opinion.
Incidentally Thayamm?m is not listed under its root ( of course the wrongly identified root) and thayamm?m is not even listed in Lanes where it should be and only in other places as an excuse to list to cover the tradition.
Saaeedan and Lanes Lexicon
As far as Saaeedan is concerned, Lanes deals with the traditional meaning, and focus on high land and low land. We know that the high and low land concept come from stories of low land being used as toilets in relation to thayamm?m. In the shifting changing landscape and terrains of the desert, someone?s toilet yesterday is your high ground today. Basically someone should possess a highly developed sense of smell or taste for being able to tell the difference of thayyaban with this situation.
Like I explained before, the confusion Lanes has is clear, with definitions ranging from dust and soil and a countless other things. Following are the meanings from Lanes for Saaeedan. ( Please note the dust/ land/ soil etc based meanings shown below are not among the main meanings offered in Lanes, therefore are not in the first few entries there. That itself is a question for its accuracy on this word)
Even land or ground, without any trees ( so for starters its not soil and originating from as mentioned from the wrongly understood Quran verse Kur IV 46 and V 9)
Desert
Surface of the earth
Whether it be dust or earth or otherwise ( That was very helpful)
High, or elevated, land or ground or high, or elevated , land or ground , above such as is low, or depressed or even land or ground ( now this is totally clear)
Surface of the earth
Earth or ground ( so far it has been very helpful)
Or good earth or land or earth or land , not mixed with sand nor with salt soil ( are we there quiet yet ? )
Or dust, or earth, such as is pure, upon the surface of the ground
Or only earth containing dust; not applied to a coarse , nor to a fine, nor to a coarse , although it be mixed with dust ( aren?t we through with the confusion or can we add few more)
Wide or an ample place
A road
A man Should strike his hands upon the surface of the earth , and not care whether there be in that place dust or not. ( And now we take Quran directly from Lanes)
shahran (I thought it was Saeedan)
Yes , now its quite clear with what we are going to rub our faces with .
The aim of the lexicon writer, is not explaining the Quran, but to record every possible word which could be found among a peoples vocabulary. Here we can see how this word and the wrong traditional understanding has expanded into every grain of ?dust? on earth.
We should understand how Arabic words are developed from a root, and how the core meaning and the qualities of the root is reflected in the associated words.
I have listed the use of Saaeedan and its root in the Quran in the earlier post, please check to see how compatible that is to the actual meaning offered.
Now shall we bring the real Saaeedan in Lanes ?
Lets go through the rest of the words and definitions (in fact the main definitions 1, 2, 3 , and other) in Lanes for Saaeedan.
Ascend cloud, increased, upwards (Hot air, vapour, rises up, its the inherent quality and soil, dust settles down. When something turns into gaseous or vapour it goes up, simply hot air goes up along with the vapour. That?s why we see clouds floating suspended in the sky and not parked in our backyards.
2 -3 He sublimated it often occurring in medical books, and used in this sense in the present day. And signifies the act of liquefying, melting or dissolving.
But lets ask why the word ?sublimate? is here. And what has sublimate got to do with dust or soil or earth or land ?
Your argument, that it is a disqualification due to being mentioned in earlier medical books is truly laughable. This clearly shows you have no idea what a lexicon is or how a language develops. Words retain its original form and meaning in old medical books and such, than in common peoples day to day vocabulary, which undergo drastic changes. This is a simple fact.
Breath, sigh, sighing , breathing emitted upwards ( the moisture/vapour we see in the breath when exhaling on a cold day or condensation - breathing into a mirror)
A certain tree from which pitch is melted forth (Again extracting liquid from solid)
A place of ascent, a station , a post of honour ( Again associated to sublimate exalted purified = high, prominent)
Also beverage, or wine, and vinegar, prepared with pains , by means of fire, or well boiled, until it becomes altered in flavour and colour ( this is distilling or evaporation both related to vapour)
The above words and definitions ascend, lift, elevate, sublimate, breathe, ?distil?, prominent, high in Lanes, is consistent with vapour and its related meanings, and these are the same and similar meanings for vapour and its associated qualities, even in English to date. What are all these words sitting in the pages for the meaning of saaeedan. Certainly not by mistake.
English Dictionaries
Also would like to remind, as shown in the earlier post, the use of vapour, vanish, evaporate , ascend in different verses of the Quran is consistent for verses with Sh Ha Dal root. While dust, soil, earth , land is not consistent in these verses and or consistent with one another. Besides the Quran has other words to describe dust, soil, earth and land.
The definitions of vapour, sublimate, and evaporate from the English Dictionaries in the earlier post, shows how a main word and its associated qualities develop, and build related words and this is more so with the root based Arabic language. Words originate and go through a natural process of development and in languages such Arabic and Aramaic this can be noticed quite clearly.
Wakas was concerned about burning himself while trying to collect water vapour while cooking or boiling. Lets look at the meaning of thayamm and avoid getting hurt.
First, there are numerous ways you can collect water vapour/ moisture without boiling the water and burning yourself.
Even after you take out of the stove and put a lid on top of the heated food the moisture will gather ( condensate) on the bottom of the lid.
Vegetables etc can be cooked without water , releasing the moisture. Every food does not have to be boiled to be cooked.
Its not only boiling which releases vapour. You can reduce or put out , the flame and then condensate the air safely , without burning yourself.
Concept of water vapour is taught possibly in grade 3 - 4 and the kids tie a polythene bag, or a bottle etc to a branch with some leaves in a tree and collect moisture/ condensation. This is a good way of collecting water in a survival situation. Also there are other ways of collecting water from thin air from moisture by condensation and that is out of this discussion.
The water released in cooking, even if there is so much of a scarcity, is still a by-product and a waste , you can still cook your food and have some amount of water to rub on your face.
Thayamm?m
We can remove the water/ moisture content in food without boiling or even heating it. Even ancient people have been using this technique to remove moisture from food to preserve it, through vacuum evaporation . Vacuum pump is an ancient invention and vacuum evaporation is used in food preservation and in vine making. Wait a minute , now why did Lanes include wine and vinegar making in Shaheedan ? Wine making involves removing the moisture in the grapes, without heating or boiling. Lanes didn?t miss distillation either. Evaporated water in high temperatures or highly distilled water contains no life. Quran188 and 1840 mentions life less vapour.
Vacuum drying for food preservation makes the moisture/ water in the food to evaporate without much heat. This is fast, and also does not damage the quality of the food as heated drying.
Guess the ancients have been doing the same thing with coffee too. Distilling is not only important for purifying water its been used in wine distilling and vinegar making for centuries. Vacuum distilling is a similar process without having to boil or heat at higher levels. Also vacuum evaporation methods are also used in making perfumes and extracting aroma from flowers etc. Hope now it is clear the reason for old medical books to carry the word Shaeedan/sublimate.
With the above on methods of food preservation we can safely assume that the Quran 2267 is referring to food preservation and the Quran warns us ? to refrain from producing lower quality food , which can not last long and therefore you will be buying at a lower price, if you are at the other end of the bargain?. Therefore Thayamm?m is the sublimation process of drawing out moisture out of food for the purpose of preservation, while the waste product water vapour being advised to be used for rubbing on the face and hands for Salat.
Quran Vs. Traditional Understanding
Just as Hadithists say the most foolish things for people to follow, on the basis that God commanded, including rubbing our face with soil, its pathetic that we are stubbornly holding onto this hadith based interpretation, when the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming.
Its almost impossible to do Quran research without dictionaries, lexicons, root and word search tools, detailed grammar etc. But all of these tools will be useless without consistent effort and careful study, starting from root level analysis to the comprehension of the full picture.
Thanks.
