Surah 105 (al Fil) and Surah 106 (Quraysh) have often been read together as similar texts composed at a similar time. I've written a long article on Surah 105. But what about Surah 106? Luxenberg and Tom Holland have argued that "quraysh" is a Syriacism that meant 'confederation,' not an Arab tribe. Ian Morris has written an article arguing against that.
http://www.iandavidmorris.com/quraysh-and-confederacy/Looking at Surah 106 carefully, the two first ayas strike me as very poorly understood, and they contain almost entirely hapax legomen.
http://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp?chapter=106&verse=1Specifically, "liīlāfi" and "īlāfihim" are used only in Surah 106:1-2 itself. Nowhere else in the Qur'an.
http://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=Alf#%28106:1:1%29"Qurayshin" is used only in Surah 106:2. Nowhere else in the Qur'an does the term Quraysh appear (!).
"riḥ'lata," nowhere else used in the sense of "journey". Just in 106:2. (The root is used in three other places to mean "bags." That's it).
"l-shitāi", only used in 106:2. Nowhere else.
"wal-ṣayfi", only used in 106:2. Nowhere else.
Of the six words used in 106:1-2, all six are hapaxes with no parallel anywhere else in the Qur'an. This suggests something may be deeply wrong here in the traditional reading of this textual unit.
Approaching the issue from a theological and literary, rather than historical/linguistic, perspective, I think Holland and Luxenberg's interpretation is very unlikely, for reasons entirely different than those given by Morris. If we assume (as I generally do) that the oldest and most poorly understood Qur'anic text represents a sort of provincial Arabic preaching of Syriac-influenced Christian religious beliefs, why would Q 106 be addressed to a *political federation*? That could make sense in later Qur'anic texts. But in the earliest texts, you would expect the audience to be a *small community of pious believers*.
So on grounds of literary and textual coherence, I would expect the beginning of Q 106 to most likely be some sort of address to such a small religious group (much like the traditional Islamic interpretation does, ironically). Not a political confederacy. So what, then, would Quraysh mean? Morris talks about how it is only attested in Syriac as a term for *collecting*. I would suggest that the obvious candidate is simply a *gathering* of pious believers. Not a political confederacy. Quraysh might then be translated as "collection/gathering/flock."
This is consistent with what Morris says about the postulated Syriac derivation: "It’s a hypothetical creation of Luxenberg’s and Holland’s, who merely extrapolate from another word, which is attested: qrash, meaning ‘gather’."
But thinking of this as an address to a gathering of pious religious believers substitutes a far more (I think) likely explanation for what the word is doing, and makes it more consistent with how you would expect the term to be used in Q 106.
Another question. What then, does "liīlāfi" mean as used in Q 106:1? It is usually translated as 'security' or 'familiarity.' I'd suggest that if you look at all the other Qur'anic uses of the same root:
http://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=Alf#%28106:1:1%29Then maybe this use of "liīlāfi" and "īlāfihim" is better interpreted as a reference to the *reconciliation/joining/affection* of the Quraysh.
If that's all right, and this is just thinking out loud, then Q 106:1-2 may simply be talking about the believers *joining together/gathering* in harmony to worship their Lord (rabba) who protects them from hunger and from fear. Thus Q 106 would be a relatively simple and coherent message, not an address to a specific political group called the Quraysh.
Topic: Surah 106 -- The Quraysh?