Mathematical Analyses of Textual Excellency of the Holy Qur’an: A Case Study of Fifteen Short Surahs

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1. Introduction

Let us begin with the first part of the Kalimah al-Ṭayyibah (The Pure Word), which can also be found in Surah Al-Ṣaffāt (Q. 37:35) and Surah Muḥammad (Q. 47:19)—the only two places in the Qur’an where this exact phrase occurs:

لَآ إِلٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ

There is no God except Allah

আল্লাহ ছাড়া কোনো উপাস্য নেই

This phrase provides a concise and yet powerful example for analyzing the structural efficiency of Qur’anic Arabic. In the original Arabic, the text is composed of three unique letters, Alif, Lām, and Hāʾ. The total number of letters is 12, arranged into four words. In English translation, the phrase expands to 15 unique letters (t, h, e, r, i, s, n, o, g, d, x, c, p, a, l), 23 total letters, and six words. In Bangla translation, it is composed of 11 unique letters (আ, ল, হ, ছ, ড়, ক, ন, উ, প, স, ই). The total letters no is 13 and there are five words.

These values are summarized in Table 1, which shows how both English and Bangla translations require a higher number of unique letters, total letters, and words compared to the Qur’anic Arabic. Specifically, English uses nearly five times more unique letters, 1.92 times more total letters, and 1.50 times more words. On the other hand, Bangla, though more compact than English, still requires 3.67 times more unique letters, 1.08 times more total letters, and 1.25 times more words than in Arabic.

Table 1.  Comparative structural features of the phrase lā ilāha illā Allāh (Q. 37:35; 47:19) in Qur’anic Arabic and its English and Bangla translations.

This example highlights that Qur’anic Arabic has a greater textural efficiency, conveying profound meaning with fewer letters and words. English and Bangla have to structurally expand to approximate or to uphold the same message. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine and quantify the textual efficiency of Qur’anic Arabic in comparison with its translations. It will try to fulfill that by analyzing the parameters- unique letters, total letters, and word counts.

2. Contextual Foundation

Qur’anic studies in the fields of theology, law, history, and sharia have already matured into well-established disciplines. Theological sides have long examined the nature of God, prophecy, and divine status; legal studies have explored the foundations of jurisprudence and their implementations in sharia; and historical approaches have traced the revelation, compilation, and evolving contextual significances of the Qur’an. On the other hand, researches on the Qur’an through the lenses of mathematics, linguistics, and computational sciences remain at a comparatively early stage. The current study stands on the reality of this relatively new era in Qur’anic studies, and is trying to analyze the Qur’an’s text in a possible way previously unexplored. Such a research may generate additional insights into the Qur’an’s linguistic structure, conciseness, and singularity.

The Qur’an itself affirms its divine protection: “Indeed, it is We who sent down the Reminder [i.e., the Qur’an], and indeed, We will be its Guardian” (Q. 15:9). It also acknowledges the choice of Arabic as its language of revelation. Numerous verses highlight this divine selection:

• “Indeed, We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur’an so that you may understand” (Q. 12:2).
• “And, so, We have revealed to you a Qur’an in Arabic, so that you may warn the Mother of Cities and everyone around it…” (Q. 42:7).
• “An Arabic Qur’an, without any deviance, that they might become righteous” (Q. 39:28).
• “If it had been a Qur’an in a foreign language… Say, ‘It is, for those who believe, a guidance and cure…’” (Q. 41:44).
• “This is a Book confirming it in the Arabic tongue…” (Q. 46:12).
• “The tongue of the one, they refer to, is foreign, and this Qur’an is in a clear Arabic tongue” (Q. 16:103).

These verses collectively affirm that Arabic was divinely chosen, not only for its accessibility to the Prophet’s immediate community but also for its inherent suitability as the language of the Qur’an. The seventh-century Arabic possessed an unparalleled eloquence, expressiveness, and clarity. Poetry and oratory flourished in pre-Islamic Arabia (Kassab 2009; Nasser 2025), and Arabic’s vast vocabulary, rhythmic flexibility, and semantic depth enabled the Qur’an to communicate with power and precision (Erdy 2025). Its stylistic and rhetorical qualities left even the most accomplished poets unable to produce anything comparable, reinforcing its miraculous nature (Messaoudi et al. 2025). Arabic structural precision allows layers of meaning to be condensed into a fewer words (Boulesnam & Boucetti 2025), a feature indispensable for a text intended as a timeless guidance. Through Arabic, the Qur’an became both a perfectly memorized oral text and a meticulously preserved written scripture, unchanged for more than fourteen centuries—an enduring testimony to divine wisdom.

Globally, there are approximately 7,159 languages in use today (Eberhard et al. 2025). Many languages evolve and change across centuries, making it difficult to quantify the true number of languages that have existed since the beginning of human civilization (Janda & Joseph 2017). Yet, the Qur’an has played a crucial role in ensuring Arabic’s preservation. Unlike many other languages that underwent dramatic structural shifts, Qur’anic Arabic remains substantially identical to its original form, safeguarded through both oral recitation and the written muṣḥaf.

This study contributes to Qur’anic linguistics by analyzing textual richness using some measurable parameters: unique letters, letters, and words. Specifically, it examines fifteen short surahs of the Qur’an and compares them to their translations in English and Bangla. These two languages were chosen for their global and regional significances: English, with approximately 380 million native speakers (third mostly spoken worldwide), and Bangla, with about 237 million native speakers (sixth mostly spoken) (Babbel 2023). Also, it is not possible to compare all the languages under the current context, and yet, it may open the doors of more identical studies.

3. Literature Review

The Qur’an, with roughly 77,000 words, is notably shorter than the New Testament (about 138,000 words) and the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (about 305,000 words). Despite this, it is dense in meaning, employing a style optimized for recitation and memorization (Jom al-Qur’an n.d.). Behnam Sadeghi’s (2011) research demonstrated that measurable linguistic features, such as verse length, mean word length, and variances in word length, vary systematically across the Qur’an, with shorter, more compact verses dominating in some passages and longer, more elaborate verses characterizing in other segments (Sadeghi & Bergmann 2010). Such work highlights that the quantitative metrics can effectively capture Qur’anic stylistic density and development, aligning to the present study’s focus on letters, words, and unique letters as markers of semantic compactness.

Studies of Dukes and Habash (2010), Dukes et al. (2010), and Dukes and Buckwalter (2010) revealed that the Qur’an’s approximately 77,430 words form a unique genre, with each word often morphologically complex, composed of stems, prefixes, and suffixes. This morphological richness enables Arabic to pack multiple layers of meaning into single words, explaining why translations require more words and letters to approximate the same semantic contents.

Halim Sayoud’s computational researches (Sayoud, 2018; 2022; Sayoud & Hadjadj 2018) further underscored the Qur’an’s uniqueness. Sayoud found that the Qur’an exhibits extraordinarily high frequencies of successive function words, averaging 27 times higher than in the ḥadīth corpus and 11 times higher than in other Arabic religious works. These findings confirm the Qur’an’s distinctive stylistic signatures within Arabic literature, complementing evidences from translation comparisons: while translations expand in size, the Qur’an remains compact, rhythmically precise, and semantically powerful.

Other quantitative studies have added further dimensions. Dror et al. (2004) developed a computational system for morphological analysis and annotations of the Qur'an. It facilitates a variety of queries on the Qur'anic text that make references to both words and their linguistic attributes. The core of the system is a set of rules which describes the morpho-phonological and morpho-syntactic phenomena of the Qur'anic language. Mahzuz (2022) tried to contribute through Abjad and non-Abjad numerical analyses of Surah al-Kawthar and found that even, at the level of individual letters, the Qur’an has astonishing mathematical precisions. Botani (2012) applied a numbers of probability models to the distribution of the verses, words, and letters, finding that the number of verses of the Qur’an per chapter follows an exponential distribution, while word counts per chapter align to a Gamma distribution. Safi (2013) identified some statistical patterns in the Noble Qur’an, and Bin Dost and Ahmad (2008) examined the symmetry between Meccan and Medinan surahs. Together, all these studies confirm the value of quantitative measures (letters, words, and distributions) in understanding the Qur’an’s structural inimitableness.

4. Research Gap and Novelty of Current Study

Despite all the above contributions, a clear research gap still remains. Existing studies have focused on the verses and word-lengths distributions, Morphological segmentation of the Qur’anic words, Stylometric markers such as function-words frequencies, statistical distributions of the verses, words, and letters across the chapters, etc.

What is missing is a direct, systematic comparison of letters, words, and unique letters at the āyah levels across the Qur’an and its translations. While prior works have analyzed the Arabic text internally, no one is found to examine how or whether translations expand structurally in terms of letter and word counts, and also none have consistently included unique-letter diversity as a metric. This omission is significant because usages of unique-letters, letters and words reflect phonetic ranges, rhythmic balances, and orthographic compactness—all central to the Qur’an’s oral and literary impacts. Present study addresses this gap by:

1. Introducing unique-letters, letters and word count as new quantitative measures of the Qur’anic compactness.
2. Comparing Arabic with translations in English and Bangla to assess how other languages expand structurally.

By doing so, the study provides fresh empirical evidences for the Qur’an’s linguistic adequacy and offers deeper possible insight into the divine sagacity behind Allah’s choice of Arabic as the language of revelation. It demonstrates that only Arabic language uniquely achieves semantic density, rhythmic precision, and phonetic economy, while translations like English and Bangla inevitably stretch the structure. This can also open a promising new avenue of Qur’anic linguistic researches at the intersection of theology, linguistics, and quantitative analysis.

5. Methodology

This study adopts a quantitative and comparative linguistic approaches to investigate into the differences in textual density between the Qur’an in its original Arabic and its translations into English and Bangla. The study uses three quantifiable parameters: word-count (the number of lexical units per āyah), letter counts (the number of alphabetic characters per āyah), and unique letters (the diversity of distinct alphabetic characters appearing in each āyah). Together, these metrics make it possible to systematically compare the Qur’anic Arabic to its translations and reveal the degree of structural expansion required when transferring compact meanings into other languages. There are 28, 26 and 50 letters in Arabic, English, and Bangla languages, respectively. These are listed in Table 2. Such variations in alphabet sizes influence the outcomes of unique-letter-counts: Bangla, with more graphemes (actual smallest visible units), naturally produces higher diversity scores, while Arabic, with fewer letters, relies on a more compact set of symbols. 

Table 2. The letters of Arabic, English and Bangla languages

For the purposes of this study, fifteen small surahs of Qur’an have been selected: al-Fātiḥa (1), al-Nās (114), al-Falaq (113), al-Ikhlāṣ (112), al-Masad (Lahab) (111), al-Naṣr (110), al-Kāfirūn (109), al-Kawthar (108), al-Māʿūn (107), Quraysh (106), al-Fīl (105), al-Humazah (104), al-ʿAṣr (103), al-Takāthur (102), and al-Qāriʿah (101). Although a study encompassing the entire Qur’an would be desirable, it would be too extensive for the current scope; and hence, the focus has deliberately been limited to this representative corpus.

The ʿUthmānī Muṣḥaf was taken as the Arabic source text. This recension, compiled under Caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (RA), is universally recognized as the authoritative written copy of the Qur’an, preserving a single, standardized text, free from regional variations and boundaries (Al-Shareef and Abdul Salam 2020). Its use ensures consistency and authenticity in letter-based analysis, since orthographic differences in non-ʿUthmānī prints could otherwise affect the counts. The recension compiled under Caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān is recognized as the authoritative written copy of the Qur’an, preserving a standardized text, free from all the regional variations (al-Aʿẓamī 2003; Burton 1977).

Particularly, for the English translation, the study employed ‘The Qur’an, with Surah Introductions and Appendices’ by Al-Mehri (2017), chosen for its accessibility and wider uses. For the Bangla translation, ‘Qur’an Shareef: Simple Bengali Translation’ by Ahmed (2008) was selected due to its popularity and straightforward style. Though many translations exist in both English and Bangla, restricting the analyses to one version of each language provides consistency and minimizes variability caused by translator style. It also mirrors practical uses, where readers often rely on a single standard translation. Therefore, the study’s analytical framework is built around three metrics:

1. Word-count was defined as the number of alphabetic units separated by whitespace.
2. Letter-count was defined as the total number of alphabetic characters. For example, in Arabic, diacritical marks (ḥarakāh such as vowel signs) were not counted, as they are orthographic aids rather than graphemes.
3. Unique letters per āyah were defined as the number of distinct alphabetic characters present. For instance, if an āyah contained the letters ا, ب, ب, ک, the unique-letter count would be three (ا, ب, ک).

In expressing the reason and philosophy of choosing the three criteria (word-count, letter-count, unique-letter count), it can be said that, ‘Word-count’ reflects syntactic compactness and the minimal lexical units needed to convey meaning. Meanwhile, ‘Letter-count’ reflects orthographic compactness and the structural expansions that occur when shifting from an abjad-based script (Arabic) to alphabetic scripts (English, Bangla). On another hand, ‘Unique-letter count’ serves as a proxy for phonetic and orthographic diversity within an āyah, indicating the breadth of alphabetic symbols needed to encode the same meaning in different languages. Therefore, both the three criteria seem to be needed in quantifying the level of space needed to express the same specific meaning. The analytical procedure here followed several steps. Firstly, each surah was segmented into āyāt. Secondly, for every āyah in Arabic, English, and Bangla, three values were reckoned: total word count, total letter count, and number of unique letters. Thirdly, these results were compiled into several comparative Tables and figures in the following sections.

6. Results and Discussions

6.1. Surah al-Fātiḥah

The unique letter number, letter number and word number of each āyah of Surah al-Fātiḥah is presented in Table 3. The table reveals quantitative differences across the Qur’anic Arabic, English, and Bangla versions of Surah al-Fātiḥah. In Qur’anic Arabic, 139 letters have been used to create 29 words. While English uses 289 letters and 72 words, and Bangla uses 168 letters to create 55 words to express the same meaning in translation. This shows, English expands meaning by ≈ 148% (= (72-29)/29x100), and Bangla by ≈ 90% (= (55-29)/29x100) compared to Arabic, respectively. Unique Letter-counts follow a similar trend: for example, the last āyah used 16, 19, and 22 unique letters in Qur’anic Arabic, English, and Bangla, respectively. This highlights that the Qur’anic Arabic achieves higher semantic density (fewer letters and words per sentence or āyah), while English and Bangla expand structurally more to preserve the same meaning. This numerical analysis confirms the Qur’an’s linguistic perfectness in Arabic compared to its translations.

Table 3. Analysis of Surah al-Fātiḥah on the bases of letters and words

6.2. Surah Al-Nās

In Table 4 it is highlighted the quantitative differences across Qur’anic Arabic, English, and Bangla renderings of Surah al-Nās. In the Qur’anic Arabic, the chapter uses 80 letters to form 20 words. In contrast, the English translation expands to 163 letters and 36 words, while the Bangla translation requires 98 letters and 32 words. Thus, compared to Arabic, English expands by ≈ 80% in word count (= (36−20)/20×100), while Bangla expands by ≈ 60% (= (32−20)/20×100). Letter-counts show a similar trend: English uses ≈ 2× more letters than Arabic, while Bangla uses ≈ 1.2× more. Fewer amount of unique letters also seen: for example, the first āyah used 10, 17, and 14 unique letters in Qur’anic Arabic, English, and Bangla, respectively. These numbers show that Arabic achieves higher semantic solidity, conveying the message with fewer letters, while English and Bangla structurally expand to preserve meaning.

Table 4. Analysis of Surah al-Nās considering letters and words

6.3. Surah Al-Falaq

Table 5 presents another comparative linguistic analysis of Surah al-Falaq across Qur’anic Arabic, English, and Bangla translations. In the Qur’anic Arabic text, the surah is compact, with 71 letters and 23 words, reflecting the Qur’an’s stylistic brevity yet in depth. The English translation, however, expands considerably to 170 letters and 45 words, which indicates that the target language often requires more words to convey the same meaning. In the same way, the Bangla translation uses 118 letters and 41 words, showing a middle ground between the conciseness of Arabic and the elaboration of English. When comparing to word-counts, English uses nearly 96% (= (45-23)/23x100) more words than Arabic, while Bangla uses about 78% (= (41-23)/23x100) more, showing inflation in text size. The analysis underscores how translation influences text density: Arabic maintains precision and rhythm, while English and Bangla introduce descriptive expansions. Also, a smaller number of unique letters are used in each respective āyah concerning to Qur’anic Arabic. This demonstrates both the linguistic richness of the Qur’an and the inevitable expansion during translations to preserve meaning and clarity.

Table 5. Analysis of Surah al-Falaq considering letters and words

6.4. Surah Al-Ikhlāṣ

The numerical structure of Surah al-Ikhlāṣ across Qur’anic Arabic, English, and Bangla translations illustrates sharp contrasts in textual density and efficiency (Table 6). In the original Arabic, the surah comprises 47 letters and 15 words, reflecting extreme conciseness and rhythmic balance. The English translation expands significantly to 85 letters and 22 words, which is nearly 47% (= (22-15)/15x100) longer in word count and 81% (= (85-47)/47x100) higher in letter count than in Arabic. This expansion shows how English requires additional syntactic units to capture theological nuances. The Bangla translation have 79 letters and 30 words, which means is has about 68% (= (79-47)/47x100) more letters and 100% ((30-15)/15x100) more words than in Qur’anic Arabic. Also, Qur’anic Arabic uses smaller number of unique letters in each āyah in respect to English and Bangla. These statistics reveal that Arabic is structurally compact and yet, semantically powerful, while both English and Bangla extend meaning by distributing ideas across more words.

Table 6. Analysis of Surah al-Ikhlāṣ talking into account the letters and words

6.5. Surah Al-Masad

The dataset for Surah al-Masad in Table 7 also presents fascinating comparison of Qur’anic Arabic, English, and Bangla in terms of structural density and linguistic expansion. The original Qur’anic Arabic text is highly concise, with 81 letters and 23 words, in delivering its core message. This brevity reflects the Qur’an’s hallmark style—compact, rhythmic, and semantically rich. The English rendering expands significantly to 186 letters and 51 words, compared to Arabic, that shows a 122% (= (51-23)/23x100) increases in word count and a 130% (= (186-81)/81x100) upsurge in letters, underscoring how English requires more syntactic units to explain nuanced meanings. Bangla stands between the two extremes, with 125 letters and 47 words. Both the word count and letter count are higher than Arabic. Both the English and Bangla languages use higher number of unique letters per āyah to express the same corresponding meaning than the Qur’anic Arabic.

Table 7. Analysis of Surah al-Masad considering letters and words

6.6. Surah Al-Naṣr

The information presented in Table 8 for Surah al-Naṣr provides valuable insights into the linguistic density of Qur’anic Arabic compared to its English and Bangla translations. The surah has 80 letters and 19 words in Qur’anic Arabic. Unique letter usage ranges from 12, 13 and 14 respectively per āyah. The English version expands to 184 letters and 42 words. Unique letter usage rises sharply to 17, 19 and 22 per sentence, reflecting English’s orthographic variety and its reliance on longer lexical units. This expansion also illustrates how and why English requires more structural elements to capture nuance, increasing both unique letter counts and total words. Bangla yields to 109 letters and 36 words. Unique letters per āyah range from 13, 17 and 19. The limited use of unique letters, overall letters, and words in Qur’anic Arabic highlights its ability to achieve a remarkable diversity of sounds and vocabulary with minimal inputs.

Table 8. Analysis of Surah al-Naṣr contemplating letters and words

6.7. Surah Al-Kāfirūn

The Table 9 for Surah al-Kāfirūn offers another interesting and quantitative and linguistic comparisons across Qur’anic Arabic, English, and Bangla languages. The surah contains 95 letters and 26 words. Unique letter counts per āyah vary between 7 and 10, showing a relatively narrower range. This reflects how Qur’anic Arabic maintains semantic intensity and rhythmic flow while using a limited sounds and vocabulary. The English version expands substantially to 191 letters and 48 words, nearly doubling both word-counts and letters, with unique letters per āyah ranging from 11 to 16. This demonstrates how English relies on longer words and additional syntactic elements to capture the same meaning. Bangla stands between the two extremes with 125 letters and 48 words. Despite a similar word count to English, Bangla achieves expression with shorter syllabic units. Unique letters range from 9 to 11, showing a moderate phonetic diversity. Overall, the analysis confirms that translation inevitably stretches the structural economy of Arabic, transforming compact verses into more elaborate forms.

Table 9. Analysis of Surah al-Kāfirūn considering letters and words

6.8. Surah Al-Kawthar

The Table 10 for Surah al-Kawthar, the shortest surah of the Qur’an, highlights clear differences between Qur’anic Arabic, English, and Bangla in terms of succinctness, structure, and linguistic density. The Arabic original is extremely concise with only 42 letters and 10 words and a consistent unique letter count of 10 across all the three verses. This reflects its rhythmic compactness and semantic precision. In contrast, the English translation expands significantly to 88 letters and 21 words, nearly doubling both letters and words, with unique letters ranging from 14–16 per verse. This expansion again illustrates how and why English requires longer structures and a wider variety of letters to capture the original meaning. The Bangla translation use 76 letters and 25 words, with unique letters in between 14–16. While Bangla mirrors English in expansion, it achieves an expression through shorter syllabic units and more descriptive phrasing. Overall, the comparisons show that Arabic conveys theological richness with minimal inputs, English elaborates through length and lexical diversity, and Bangla balances compactness with descriptiveness, though both translations inevitably dilute the Qur’an’s original brevity and rhythm.

Table 10. Analysis of Surah al-Kawthar considering letters and words

6.9. Surah Al-Māʿūn

In Table 11, Surah al-Māʿūn highlights similar differences in structural density and linguistic style across the Qur’anic Arabic, English, and Bangla translations, as above. The Arabic text is concise with 114 letters and 25 words, while unique letters per āyah vary between 7–12, showing a balanced but limited phonetic diversity that enhances rhythm and memorability. The English translation nearly doubles the size, with 203 letters and 48 words and unique letters ranging from 9–17. This expansion reflects the need for more elaborate phrasing and lexical variety to capture the original meaning, though it diverts from the Arabic brevity and rhetorical sharpness. The Bangla translation, with 147 letters and 54 words, showing how Bangla relies on shorter syllabic expressions but distributes the meanings across more words. Its unique letters range from 11–17, indicating strong phonetic richness despite compact word lengths. Overall, the difference shows that Arabic conveys maximum impact with minimal input, English elaborates through structural expansion and lexical diversity, while Bangla balances descriptive details with syllabic bonding. Both translations, however, stretch the concise rhythm and density that characterize the Qur’anic original.

Table 11. Analysis of Surah al-Māʿūn considering letters and words

6.10. Surah Quraysh

Table 12 for Surah Quraysh demonstrates the striking compactness and rhetorical highness of the Qur’anic Arabic compared to English and Bangla translations. The Qur’anic Arabic original uses only 75 letters and 17 words, with unique letters per āyah ranging between 7 and 13. This shows how the Qur’an achieves profound meaning with a limited set of phonetic and lexical units, producing both brevity and rhythmic elegance. In contrast, the English translation expands to 165 letters and 37 words, raising the unique letter range in between 14–17. The additional length in English reflects the need for more structural and explanatory details, but it dilutes the sharp brevity of the Arabic expression. The Bangla translation, with 105 letters and 34 words, achieves a balance by spreading meaning across shorter syllabic words while maintaining moderate phonetic richness (11–20 unique letters). Overall, the comparison upholds Qur’anic Arabic as uniquely concise, melodious, and semantically dense, while translations—though necessary for accessibility—unavoidably stretch the compact rhetorical sharpness that is intrinsic to the Qur’an’s original language.

Table 12. Analysis of Surah Quraysh counting letters and words

6.11. Surah Al-Fīl

In Surah al-Fīl, the numerical data makes visible the economy of Qur’anic Arabic compared to its translations. The Arabic text conveys the entire surah in only 96 letters and 23 words (Table 13), while maintaining a balanced range of 10–12 unique letters per āyah. This balance creates both rhythm and brevity, showing how the Qur’an compresses profound historical narratives into the most compact form. By contrast, the English rendering nearly doubles the size, requiring 194 letters and 44 words, with unique letters expanding from 13 to 19. The need for explanatory phrases in English inevitably stretches the concise, emphatic style of Arabic. Bangla sits between the two, using 133 letters and 44 words, reflecting its reliance on shorter syllables but descriptive details. Its unique letter counts rise as high as 12 up to 17, suggesting richness but less economy. What stands out is that while English and Bangla translations serve clarity, they cannot replicate the Qur’an’s original sharpness—its measured brevity, sound harmony, and dense semantic layering remain unmatched in Arabic used in the Qur’an.

Table 13. Analysis of Surah al-Fīl considering letters and words

6.12. Surah Al-Humazah

In Surah al-Humazah, the statistics again clearly reveals the Qur’an’s mastery of brevity and rhetorical impact in Arabic. As shown in Table 14, with only 133 letters and 33 words, the surah delivers a sharp condemnation of arrogance, material obsession, and mockery, while maintaining a compact flow of 6–12 unique letters per āyah. The English translation, by contrast, nearly doubles the size to 269 letters and 64 words, with unique letter counts as high as 12-16, reflecting the need for extended phrasing and syntactic expansion to capture what Arabic compresses into a few strokes. In case of Bangla, while more efficient than English at 172 letters and 64 words, and with unique letters ranging in between 9-22 per sentence, still cannot mirror the Arabic’s compact sharpness. It distributes meanings across syllabic units and descriptive elaboration. This comparative statistics highlights that while translations serve clarity and accessibility, the Qur’anic Arabic stands unmatched in its brevity, melodic rhythm, and semantic density, achieving profound expression with the least verbal expenditure.

Table 14. Analysis of Surah al-Humazah on the scale of letters and words

6.13. Surah Al-ʿAṣr

The entire surah al-ʿAṣr, is expressed just by 71 letters and 14 words, yet it encompasses a complete worldview: an oath by time, the inevitable loss of mankind, and the exception of those grounded in faith, good deeds, truth, and patience. Unique letter counts range modestly from 6 to 14, showing that Arabic achieves both sound variety and rhetorical power with minimal vocabulary. In another side, the English version expands to 138 letters and 31 words, nearly doubling the length, with unique letters rising as high as 6 to 20; this reflects the necessity of explanatory additions in order to unfold what Arabic compresses so elegantly.

The Bangla rendering stands at 85 letters and 30 words, with unique letters rising as high as 7 to 22, closer to English in word count but characterized by shorter syllabic expressions. Still, both translations inevitably dilute the compact rhythm of Arabic. Thus, this surah exemplifies how the Qur’an in its original Arabic achieves an unmatched brevity, rhythm, and semantic depth, encapsulating vast meanings within the smallest linguistic framework.

Table 15. Analysis of Surah al-ʿAṣr relying on letters and words

6.14. Surah Al-Takāthur

In Surah al-Takāthur, with only 123 letters and 28 words, and unique letters ranging from 8 to 12, the surah delivers a sweeping critique of human obsession with material rivalry, extending even to the grave, and then a vivid reminder of certainty, Hellfire, and accountability. This compact presentation style is what gives the Arabic its penetrating rhythm and rhetorical sharpness. In contrast, the English rendering expands to 252 letters and 60 words, nearly doubling the length, while unique letters reach 12–17, reflecting the need for elaborate phrasing to capture nuances that Arabic expresses with brevity. The Bangla translation stand at 176 letters and 57 words, closer to English in length but shaped by shorter syllabic constructions, making it descriptively rich but less compact (Table 16). What emerges is the Qur’an’s unmatched eloquence: in Arabic, a few words carry the weight of eternity, while translations, though useful for comprehension, inevitably stretch the original’s concise force and musical cadence.

Table 16. Analysis of Surah al-Takāthur considering letters and words

6.15. Surah Al-Qāriʿah

In Surah al-Qāriʿah (Table 17), the numerical structure brings out the Qur’an’s remarkable ability to compress awe-inspiring imagery into a tightly knit form. The Arabic text employs only 158 letters and 36 words, with unique letter counts ranging from 6 to 13. This compactness ensures rhythm, repetition, and rhetorical intensity, where sound and meaning reinforce each other. The English translation, however, expands to 330 letters and 83 words, reflecting the requisite for explanatory phrases to convey what Arabic achieves with piercing brevity. The unique letter counts, higher in English (12–18), show a reliance on lexical variety over rhythmic concision. Bangla, with 156 letters and 58 words, takes a middle path, leaning on short syllabic constructions but still stretching the message descriptively. Thus, the comparison reconfirms that while translations may communicate the sense, they cannot replicate the Arabic’s unmatched eloquence, where few words reverberate with eternal weight, blending brevity, rhythm, and meaning in a way no other language fully sustains.

Table 17. Analysis of Surah al-Qāriʿah considering letters and words

7. Findings and Discussion

For a better visual understanding, the number of letters in different languages with respect to different Surahs and the number of words in different languages with respect to different Surahs are presented in Figure 1 and 2, respectively. Also, the range of minimum to maximum usages of unique letters in different languages with respect to the Surahs of the present study is presented in Figure 3. From Table 3-17, letter and word count of the individual surah is presented. But now, across the fifteen selected surahs, the cumulative totals reveal the following final outputs.

Figure 1. Number of letters in different languages with respect to Surah

Out of the 15 surahs, the total number of letters in Qur’anic Arabic is 1405 (Table 3-17). English translation contains 2907 letters, while Bangla translation requires 1874 letters (Table 3-17). This indicates that, relative to Qur’anic Arabic, English uses 2.07 times or 107% more letters and, Bangla uses 1.33 times or 33% more letters. On the other hand, out of the 15 surahs, Qur’anic Arabic employs 341 words (Table 3-17). By comparison, English translation expands to 704 words and Bangla translation to 655 words (Table 3-17). This means that, relating to Qur’anic Arabic, English uses 2.06 times more words (a 106% increase) and Bangla uses 1.92 times more words (a 92% increase).

Figure 2. Number of words in different languages with respect to Surah

These upshots provide a quantitative approximation of the Qur’an’s textual excellency in Arabic compared to translations. Across all the fifteen surahs under study here, Qur’anic Arabic consistently delivers meaning with the least linguistic expenditure—fewer words, fewer letters, and a more compact range of unique letters. Translations in English and Bangla necessarily expand in both word count and letter count, underscoring the Qur’an’s incomparable conciseness and semantic density in its original Arabic form.

Letter and word based comparative numerical analyses of Surahs Al-Fātiḥah, Al-Nās, Al-Falaq, Al-Ikhlāṣ, Al-Lahab, Al-Naṣr, Al-Kāfirūn, Al-Kawthar, Al-Maʿūn, Quraysh, Al-Fīl, Al-Humazah, Al-ʿAṣr, Al-Takāthur, and Al-Qāriʿah demonstrate a scintillating linguistic asymmetry between Qur’anic Arabic and its translations into English and Bangla. It reveals a consistent and profound phenomenon: Qur’anic Arabic is uniquely effective in delivering meaning with unmatched brevity, rhythm, and semantic compactness. The translations, while necessary for comprehension and accessibility, inevitably expand the text in terms of word count, letter count, and unique letter usages. These results may underscore the theological justification of Allah’s choice of Arabic as the language of the Qur’an, as well as the Qur’an’s inimitability.

Figure 3. Ranges of minimum to maximum usages of unique letters in different languages with respect to the Surahs of the study

A recurring pattern throughout all the surahs scrutinized here is a remarkable conciseness of the Qur’anic Arabic language. For instance, Surah al-Fātiḥah employs only 139 letters and 29 words to express a completely theological worldview—divine Lordship, mercy, worshiping, and supplication. In contrast, English translations expand to 289 letters and 72 words, while Bangla uses 168 letters and 55 words (Table 3). The same pattern emerges in Surah al-Ikhlāṣ, a foundational chapter that affirms divine Oneness. The original Arabic text of Surah al-Ikhlāṣ contains 47 letters and 15 words, while the English translation expands to 85 letters and 22 words, and Bangla to 79 letters and 30 words (Table 6). In terms of unique letters usages, for example considering Surah al-Nās (Table 4), in the respective verses, the range of minimum to maximum unique letters for Qur’anic Arabic varies from 5-11, for English varies from 12-17 and for Bangla varies from 8-15. This demonstrates that the Qur’an in Arabic conveys profound theological principles in minimal linguistic spaces. Such consequences are not a superficial matter of brevity. It represents semantic density: the ability to condense vast meanings into the smallest possible form and shape. For a scripture intended for recitation, memorizing, and universal transmission, this property is indispensable. This study has analyzed only English and Bangla translations, selected for their global and regional significances, and due to space considerations. It is needed to point that in translation (either English or Bangla) count of words, letters and unique letters should be interpreted as a relative measure, affected by translation conventions and linguistic structures of the target language of the translator.

The number of letters functions as an independent indicator that highlights structural differences between Arabic and its translations. Qur’anic Arabic, expresses vowels through diacritics and uses morphological compactness and tashdīd to convey meanings with fewer written symbols. But, English and Bangla, as alphabetic scripts, must write vowels and phonetic details as full letters, naturally increasing letter-count keeping the meaning the same. Thus, letter-count independently reflects the script efficiency and economy of Arabic compared to the translation languages. The number of unique letters is also considered as an independent criterion. It measures the diversity of alphabetic symbols required to express an āyah, rather than the total quantity of letters or words. While letter-count reflects orthographic length, unique-letter count reflects the phonetic range and, graphemic variety of a language. Arabic often conveys meaning using a fewer set of recurring consonantal roots, whereas English and Bangla distribute meaning across a wider variety of letters. Thus, unique-letter usage independently captures how broadly each language’s script must extend to encode the same content. One of the remarkable features of Arabic is its use of iʿrāb, tanwīn, and tashdīd, which convey grammatical and phonetic information without increasing the number of written letters. As a result, Arabic expresses meaning with fewer written symbols, reducing both word-count and letter-count and contributing to the language’s exceptional structural compactness. While translations often appear longer than the Qur’anic Arabic text, part of this difference is due to the inherent structural properties of the Arabic language itself which naturally allow to convey meaning with fewer written symbols. This linguistic characteristic is similar in Qur’anic and in typical of Arabic as a language. At the same time, from a broader Islamic theological perspective, such structural conciseness may also help explain why Arabic, beyond merely being the Prophet’s mother tongue, was divinely chosen as the language of revelation: its natural brevity enables rich, layered meanings to be communicated with exceptional clarity and economy.

The same methodology, examining word counts, letter counts, and unique letter usages, can be extended to other any languages. Such research could open an entirely new interdisciplinary field, combining linguistics, computational analysis, theology, and translation studies. It is also necessary to emphasize that this study does not intend to rank languages as superior or inferior. Every language has its own intrinsic richness, history, and expressive capacity. The purpose of the comparisons here is not to suggest that Arabic is better than English, Bangla, or any other languages in general, rather, it is to highlight that the Qur’anic Arabic uniquely combines features such as semantic density, rhythms, phonetic balances that make it the divinely chosen vehicle for revelation. This distinction is solely theological, neither cultural nor nationalistic.

8. Conclusion

Finally, across the fifteen selected surahs of the ʿUthmānī Muṣḥaf of the Qur’an and the selected translation scripts (al-Mehri 2017; Ahmed 2008), the study underscores that,

• Compared to Qur’anic Arabic, English translations require 2.07 times more letters and expand by 2.06 times in terms of words.
• Compared to Qur’anic Arabic, Bangla translations use 1.33 times more letters and 1.92 times more words.
• Moreover, Qur’anic Arabic maintains phonetic economy and rhythm with fewer unique letters, than the English and Bangla, also ensuring the best clarity, rhythm, memorability, and harmony in recitation.

These outcomes highlight a consistent pattern: Qur’anic Arabic delivers profound meaning with remarkable conciseness, while translations necessarily expand the text. Qur’anic Arabic uniquely combines semantic density, rhythmic harmony, and phonetic elegance, properties not reproducible in English or in Bangla. The compactness of Qur’anic Arabic allows complex theological truths, such as divine mercy, worship, or Oneness, to be expressed in a fraction of the linguistic space required in translation.  From a theological perspective, these findings may affirm Allah’s deliberate choice of Arabic for His final revelation. The Qur’an was intended for universal guidance and perpetual preservation through oral transmission and memorization. Arabic’s structural proficiency makes it uniquely capable of fulfilling divine purposes. Although this study focused on: 1) fifteen selected surahs, 2) English and Bangla languages, and 3) two translation books, Al-Mehri (2017) and Ahmed (2008), extending the methodology to other major languages would likely yield similar results, and further validating the Qur’an’s linguistic distinctiveness. Use of multiple translations in each language can provide robust data. Due to scope limitations, the present study uses only one English and one Bangla translation. Future studies can incorporate multiple translations in different languages as well. Also, coming research can include more Surahs of Qur’an to draw more generate generic information.

Everything is created by Allah, including Arabic Language. Since Qur’an is a very special book therefore as the language of revelation it is not surprising that Arabic also can contain special quality in terms of structure, compactness and expression. Whether Arabic inherently possesses distinctive linguistic properties or whether it was divinely selected for the purpose of revelation-in both ways-the remarkable brevity and semantic density of Qur’an is beyond dispute. At least this conclusion can be drawn under the presented analysis and result- focusing on the three target languages (Arabic, English and Bangla) and fifteen small surahs of Qur’an examined in this study. Importantly, the intention of current study was to describe structural differences, not to evaluate Arabic, English and Bangla as superior of inferior. Both English and Bangla use full vowel letters for clarity and readability. This naturally increases letter counts compared to Arabic's diacritic-based system. This research tried to highlight Qur’anic Arabic’s textual excellency as the vessel of revelation. The results reaffirm what believers have always recognized: the Qur’an’s Arabic is unique, divinely chosen, and linguistically miraculous.