Amasya İlahiyat Dergisi

Abstract

Words, like a living organism, are in a dynamic state which contain features such as birth, development, change and weakening. The fact that words and concepts gain new meanings according to time and space, their meanings change and undergo changes such as expansion, contraction, in fact, stand parallel with the principle of change of nature. As a matter of fact, a word used in a certain sense at a certain time can be used in another sense at another time. And it can even have an opposite meaning. In addition, many factors such as religion, thought, profession, technology have caused the words to be used to convey different meanings from their lexical ones. For example, after the divine revelation was delivered to people, most of the words stated in Qur’an were known in the period of Ignorance, but due to the semantic changes and transformations they underwent because of the context in which these word were revealed, there has become many words such as salah, savm, zakat, jihad, heaven, hell, afterlife, wajib, haram, makruh, fard that gained new terminological meanings pertaining to Religion. In the ongoing process, there were also concepts that are termed in different Islamic sciences after Qur’an within the scope of Qur’an studies. According to that, in this study, the concept and semantic adventure of ḳ-d-m rooted words, which form the root letters of Almighty Allah’s name al-Muḳaddim and the adjective al-Ḳıdem are discussed while the linguistic and historical semantics are explored. After revealing the etymological, morphological, lexical and terminological meanings of the words derived from this root word, their usage in the Ignorance and Islamic periods, the terminology in Islamic sciences and in certain fields today were analyzed chronologically. The meanings that these words point to and acquired in the Qur’an and hadiths during the revelation period were examined. Firstly dictionaries, poetry divans of the Ignorance period, poetry magazines, works focusing on Arabic proverbs, and secondly the basic sources of other Islamic sciences, especially tafsir and hadith sources, were scanned to approach q-d-m rooted words. The basic meanings of the words derived from the root word, the meanings they gained according to periods and sciences, and the meaning changes they underwent were revealed. It has been observed that ḳ-d-m rooted terms used in many branches of science, from music to rhetoric, from logic to Islamic law, sometimes expanded and sometimes collapsed into new meanings different from their lexical meaning. This study is important in terms of seeing both the meaning of the word in periods and the different meanings it has acquired in various sciences. At the end of the study, it was seen that the main meanings of the root word ḳ-d-m are “to come, to move forward, foot and the old". With different derivatives of the root, it has been determined that this word has many meanings such as "to come first, to advance, to advance, to be brave, to leap forward, to arrive, to reach, to be present, to come, to tend, to mean, to wear out, to stay out of date, to go over a long time, to present, to offer, to offer, to bring forward, to put forward, to advance, to advance”. Again, one of the results obtained in the study is that ḳ-d-m rooted words in Qur’an are used generally within the framework of their lexical meaning. However, it has been understood that some words are given different meanings depending on the context. Because it is attributed to Allah, al-Muḳaddim, one of the names of Allah, has gained more extensive and essential meanings such as “putting forward the thing that should be put forward, according to Allah's own will and choice, by law or de facto, bringing beings closer to Himself, and giving lofty ranks”. The word “kidem” from the same root is used as an attribute of Allah. Again, when it is used as an attribute of Allah, there is an expansion in the meaning of the word and it gains a meaning as “Allah’s existence has no beginning and exists without the need for anyone else”. It is revealed that the compound formed by the root ḳ-d-m with other words also reveals terms in various fields apart from its lexical meaning. As a matter of fact, "Muḳaddime" is used both for “the first pages of the book, which give summary information about the content, purpose of writing, style, preface, and introduction” and for each of the propositions from which conclusions are drawn in the qiyas in logic.