Understanding the Oaths Uttered on Things Other Than Allah in the Qur’ān in Terms of Contextual Signification

Taking oath/swearing is one of the important ways of giving assurance in Arabic language. People of the dominantly oral culture in the Arab society during the time of the revelation of the Qur’an would use oath to reassure the addresses, and so oaths would serve as something of a document to convince the interlocutor. One may very well say that the Qur’an’s ways of uttering oath are not far from those of the people of that society. However, there are also the kinds of oaths that are not of the same nature. This article investigates and offers an analysis about the possible reasons for taking oath on things other than God in the Qur’an. The present study argues that the oaths which Allah utters on creatures do not have an apodosis with the intention of providing assurance. It instead advances the idea that use of such oaths with no conclusions and semantic indicators is peculiar to the Qur’an. This article thus explores reasons for oaths without apodosis and, based an Arabic linguistic rules, proposes a solution as to how to understand these kinds of statements.