Due to the attraction of poetry and eloquence, meaningful sayings would remain in people’s memories and be passed down the generations. In consequence of this innate need, therefore, the goods most in demand in the immaterial market of that people were eloquence and fine speech. A tribe’s poet or orator was like its greatest national hero. It was he who was their greatest source of pride. Thus, among the peoples of the world, the eloquence and rhetoric of that clever people, who by virtue of their intelligence ruled the world after the establishment of Islam, was at the highest and most advanced degree. It was the thing most highly prized among them that they felt greatest need of, and was their cause of pride. They attached such value to eloquence that two tribes would do battle at the word of a poet or orator, and they would make peace at his word. They even wrote in gold on the walls of the Ka‘ba the seven qasidas of seven poets called the al-Mu‘allaqat al-Sab‘a, and took great pride in them. It was at such a time when eloquence was thus most sought after that the Qur’an was revealed. Just as at the time of Moses (Upon whom be peace) it was magic that was most sought after and at the time of Jesus (Upon whom be peace), it was medicine. The most important of their miracles were in those fields.

The Qur’an, therefore, invited the Arabian orators of that time to reply to even one of the shortest of the suras. It challenged them with the decree of:

And if you are in doubt about what We have revealed to Our servant, then produce a Sura resembling it.(2:23)

It also said: “If you do not believe, you shall be damned and shall go to Hell.” It provoked them intensely. It smashed their pride in fearsome manner. It was contemptuous of their arrogant minds. It condemned them firstly to eternal extinction and then to eternal extinction in Hell, as well as to worldly extinction. It said: “Either dispute me, or you and your property shall perish.”

If it had been possible to dispute the Qur’an, is it at all possible that while there was an easy solution like disputing it with one or two lines and nullifying the claim, they should have chosen the most dangerous and most difficult, the way of war? Yes, is it at all possible that that clever people, that politically-minded nation, who at a later time were to govern the world through politics, should have abandoned the shortest, easiest, and lightest way, and chosen the most dangerous, which was going to cast their lives and all their property into peril? For if their literary figures had been able to dispute it with a few words, the Qur’an would have given up its claim and they would have been saved from material and moral disaster.