The Circle Of The Qur'an #2[The Arkaan Series|Book One]

7 |The Marabout's 1000 Profound Steps.[Iqra Wartaqi..(Recite And Ascend..)]

In summary, climbing up the steps, he had a total of a 1000 inscriptions to decrypt! A thousand verses! Only one with a profound knowledge of Al Qur'an could do this, and given the limited time duration, it was also a trial on one's quick insight and familiarity with the ayaat of Al Qur'an.

From what Mika'il said, most competitors only focus on the inscriptions of the keystones as they ascend.. If you are able to decrypt 200, you are considered a Qur'an genius! Those who challenge the voussoirs in addition, and solve past 200 inscriptions, are recognized as Prodigies of Sky Legacy Haven. Once you've scored past the 350th mark, you're called Heaven's Chosen!

The Nine Mureeds are naturally of this latter category..

He looked at the four voussoirs surrounding the keystone of his first solitary archway. They had the same similar inscriptions of three or more disjointed letters from the Arabic alphabet. Mika'il had said that these disjointed letters were random letters of the Qur'an alphabet, and that it was rare to find the huruful Muqatta'at among them. Thus, these were complete words from which whole ayaat could be drawn!

They repeated in different patterns and with different letters, as one moved up the archway path. But each was a combination of at least three disjointed letters, all based on the Arabic 'Root' system of forming words.

Abdul Bâqi was all calm inside, as he reviewed what Mika'il had told him about the quest, earlier in the masjid.

"There are nine archway paths.. Once you decide to challenge the quest, you will be allowed to choose one of the archway paths for a limited period of time during which you'll be moving up the path in challenge of the quest, with or without others to compete.

After every five successive flight of steps, you'll encounter a solitary archway on your path; each complete with jaded vertical columns and a full arch made of alabaster, ornamented with precious stones. On the keystone of each of their arches is a set of disjointed letters ranging from three to more. These are Arabic letters from the Qur'an. However they're not the huruful Muqatta'at...

The test is to form whole words from these solitary letters, and then from these words, recall ayaat of the Qur'an which pertain to them, whether directly or indirectly. Thus, all the 200 keystones with their disjointed letters, each represent an ayah of Al Qur'an!"

"So the challenge is to derive from the solitary archways 200 ayaat which are from the Qur'an, using the disjointed letters of the keystones? That's quite easy. I'm surprised there are not plenty 'Number One' Mureeds in SLH for a hundred years now. Are you all that not proficient in the Qur'an!?" Abdul Bâqi laughed.

Mika'il shook his head and continued,"You'd be right if that was all there was to it. Let me finish talking before you cut in, paysan.. Apart from the 200 keystones, four of the voussoirs on each arch of every solitary archway also possess a complete set of disjointed letters! So for every archway you meet, you're not limited to solving only one set of inscriptions which is on the central keystone, but five!

You see it's not just called the 'Marabout's 1000 Profound Steps' for naming sake.. Every five successive flight of steps provides you with a solitary archway, upon which are five different sets of disjointed letters each representing the five steps you've already crossed, and every one of them represents an ayah of Qur'an.

Thus in total, there are not 200 ayaat to be deciphered, but a 1000!!!"

Abdul Bâqi mulled over it.. If the time given had been unlimited, he might have completed all 1000 inscriptions in a day and a half, by just devoting only his free time to it. But considering all the students were given a limited time duration to challenge the quest, it was obvious they were testing not only intuition and one's strength of recall of Qur'an ayaat, but also the quick perception and sharpness of the students!