Praise be to Allah, and may peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah. To proceed:
The Noble Qur’an is not poetry, nor is it prose in the conventional literary sense known among the Arabs. Rather, it is the Word of Allah Almighty, with its own distinctive style and structure that set it apart from all human speech.
Allah explicitly denied that the Qur’an is poetry and denied that the Prophet ﷺ was a poet. He said:
﴿So I swear by what you see, and what you do not see: indeed, it is the word of a noble Messenger. And it is not the word of a poet; little do you believe. Nor is it the word of a soothsayer; little do you remember. It is a revelation from the Lord of the worlds﴾ [Al-Haqqah: 38–43].
Allah also said:
﴿And We did not teach him poetry, nor is it befitting for him. It is only a reminder and a clear Qur’an﴾ [Ya-Sin: 69].
Thus, the Qur’an is not poetry, and the Prophet ﷺ was not a poet.
The Arabs were familiar with poetry and its various forms. They also knew different types of prose, speeches, letters, and ordinary forms of expression. When the Noble Qur’an came with its distinctive style, they were unable to classify it as any of the familiar forms of speech.
For this reason, some of the polytheists accused the Prophet ﷺ of being a poet. However, eloquent Arabs who heard the Qur’an and were familiar with the different forms of speech recognized that it was not poetry.
Among those who testified to this was ʿUtbah ibn Rabiʿah, who listened to the Prophet ﷺ reciting the beginning of Surat Fussilat. He then returned to Quraysh and stated that what he had heard was neither poetry, magic, nor soothsaying.
This account has been transmitted in books of Prophetic biography and evidence, and Al-Albani regarded its chain as acceptable in his commentary on Fiqh al-Sirah.
Another important testimony is that of Unays al-Ghifari, who was himself a poet.
Muslim narrated, in the story of Abu Dharr’s conversion to Islam, that Unays went to Makkah and later returned, telling his brother that he had met a man who claimed that Allah had sent him, while people described him as a poet, soothsayer, or magician.
When Unays was asked about the Prophet’s ﷺ speech, he said that he had heard the words of soothsayers but found nothing in the Prophet’s speech resembling them. He also compared it with different forms and styles of poetry and did not find the Qur’an to be poetry.
Abu al-ʿAbbas al-Qurtubi, may Allah have mercy on him, stated that when Unays compared the Qur’an with the different forms of poetry, it became clear to him that it was not poetry. Therefore, he concluded that it was incorrect to describe the Qur’an as poetry.
If the Qur’an is not poetry, can it be called prose?
The answer is that the Qur’an does not fall under conventional prose either. Rather, it has an independent and distinctive style, different from the styles of the Arabs in both poetry and prose.
The Qur’an uses Arabic words and structures understood by the Arabs, but it came with a unique composition and style that was not familiar in their speech.
Several scholars of Qur’anic inimitability pointed to this meaning, including Al-Rummani, who explained that the Qur’an came in a unique manner beyond the customary styles, possessing a level of beauty surpassing other forms of speech.
Abu Bakr al-Baqillani likewise stated that the composition of the Qur’an falls outside the customary forms of composition in Arabic speech and differs from their modes of expression. It is neither poetry nor the familiar form of rhymed prose, nor speech structured according to the meters known among the Arabs.
It therefore becomes clear that dividing Arabic speech into poetry and prose does not mean that the Qur’an must belong to one of these two categories. The Qur’an is the Word of Allah Almighty, with its own characteristics, structure, and style that distinguish it from human speech.
The source also cites Taha Hussein as stating that the Qur’an is neither poetry nor prose, but rather Qur’an, with stylistic characteristics and constraints not found in other forms of speech.
This is consistent with what scholars of Qur’anic inimitability have established: the Qur’an came with a style distinct from the styles known among the Arabs, while its vocabulary and grammatical structures remain part of the Arabic language they understood.
The Noble Qur’an is not poetry, and Allah explicitly denied that description. Nor is it prose in the conventional literary sense known among the Arabs. Rather, it is the Word of Allah Almighty, revealed in a unique structure and style distinct from human speech.
Some eloquent Arabs who heard it and were familiar with poetry and soothsaying testified to this, including ʿUtbah ibn Rabiʿah and Unays al-Ghifari, may Allah be pleased with him. Scholars of Qur’anic inimitability likewise established that the structure of the Qur’an lies outside the customary styles of Arabic speech.
And Allah knows best.