A Miracle of the Quran: Spider

There are “feminine” and “masculine” suffixes in Arabic words like in many other languages. With the help of these suffixes, we understand, for instance, if a verb in a statement belongs to a female or a male. This meaning is given only by adding a single letter of “t” to the end of a word in Arabic.

There is a surah (chapter) titled “al-Ankabut”, which means “spider” in Arabic, in the Quran. Allah states: “The parable of those who take protectors other than God is that of the spider, who builds (to itself) a house; but truly the flimsiest of houses is the spider's house; - if they but knew.” in the 41st verse of this surah. The word “ittakhadha” which means one who does something or has something is written as “ittakhadhat” in the original Arabic text of this verse. That is to say, the letter “t” at the end of the word gives it female meaning. As it is clearly understood from this, it is concluded that the spider that builds a house is female.

In the year of 1984, a worldwide known German magazine of science named Kosmos published an exclusive issue about spiders. We are sure that you will be very surprised and will be happy to witness another Quranic miracle when you read the following lines from that interesting issue of the magazine:

“The capability of building nets and catching food is valid only for female spiders. That is to say; the net covering the entrance of the cave where the Prophet of Islam hid was built by a female spider. And we do not have much information on the lives of male spiders. All we know is that they are incapable of building nets (building houses)…”