Numerical Structure of the Quran

An Approach Based on Benford’s Law

You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it for yourself. I have given you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brain, and you are responsible for using them. (Quran 17:36)

Henri Poincare, a famous French mathematician of late 19th century, once said “If God speaks to man, He undoubtedly uses the language of mathematics.”

The Quran is intended to be an eternal miracle. A highly sophisticated mathematical system based on prime number 19 was embedded into the fabric of the Quran (decoded between 1969-1974 and onwards with the aid of computers). This system provided verifiable PHYSICAL evidence that “The Book is, without a doubt, a revelation from the Lord of the universe” (32:2), and incontrovertibly ruled out the possibility that it could be the product of a man living in the ignorant Arabian society of the 7th century. It also proved that no falsehood could enter into the Quran, as promised by God.

To ascertain that they fully delivered their Lord's messages, He protectively enveloped what He entrusted them with and He counted the numbers of all things. 72:28 (7+2+2+8=19)

Furthermore the mathematical miracle of the Quran shed new light on the exceptional style and structure of the book. Here, we will look into one of these aspects through Digital Analysis based on a modern mathematical theorem known as Benford’s Law which has proved strikingly effective in detecting frauds.

Benford’s Law

According to Benford’s discovery, if you count any collection of objects – whether it be pebbles on the beach, the number of words in a magazine article or dollars in

your bank account – then the number you end up with is more likely to start with a “1” than any other digit. Somehow, nature has a soft spot for digit “one.” Frank Benford, a physicist with the General Electric Company, was not the first who made this astonishing observation. 19 years before the end of 19th century, the American astronomer and mathematician Simon Newcomb noticed that the pages of heavily used books of logarithms were much more worn and smudged at the beginning than at the end, suggesting that for some reason, people did more calculations involving numbers starting with 1 than 8 and 9. (Newcomb, S. "Note on the Frequency of the Use of Digits in Natural Numbers." Amer. J. Math 4, 39-40, 1881)

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