What Is Meant Here
Dhikr, in this technical usage by Shahrur, is the aspect of spoken wording and worship in all the verses of the Book. The reader may recite the dhikr and worship through it “regardless of understanding its content”; as for the content and topics, Shahrur discusses them under the name of the Book.
This entry belongs to the Shahrur Lexicon.
What Is Attributed to Shahrur
Shahrur defines dhikr as the spoken, worshipped linguistic form of all the verses of the Book, and connects its preservation to Qur’an 15:9. He also states that dhikr is “the phonetic form of the entire Book” and “the worship form.”
In contrasting the two names, he describes the Book as “the collection of topics found between the covers of the muṣḥaf,” and qualifies its relation to dhikr by saying that it is dhikr “only in respect of wording.” The distinction here is functional: dhikr from the perspective of form, and the Book from the perspective of topics.
In the context of his discussion of language and the development of grammar, he says that the “people of dhikr” are “scholars of language and linguistics.” This statement is tied to that context and is not a comprehensive definition of the expression in all its uses.
Atlas Explanation
This entry distinguishes between two matters that should not be conflated: the spoken form through which worship is performed, and the collection of topics. It therefore does not explain “dhikr” as merely another name for the Book, but as a designation for a specific aspect of it: wording, recitation, and worship.
This aspect is read within the network of names for the text in which Shahrur places dhikr alongside the Book, the Qur’an, and the Criterion. For a related entry, see synonymy, without claiming a detailed distinction unsupported by the evidence available here.
Qualified Inference
Based on this definition, the preservation referred to in this passage concerns the spoken linguistic form that Shahrur calls dhikr. Understanding the content, however, is not a condition for the occurrence of recitation and worship according to the same definition.
Open Question and Limits of Reading
This corpus alone does not establish that dhikr is specifically the “Arabic form”; the attested expression is “the spoken linguistic form.” Nor does the evidence available here provide sufficient detail concerning the technical relationship between dhikr and the Qur’an; therefore, this entry should not be based on asserting a detailed distinction between them.
For the Qur’anic context, see Qur’an 15:9. For the existing source traces: Dhikr is a modern Arabic form of the Book, The people of dhikr are specialists in the Arabic language, and Dhikr and the Qur’an between worship and knowledge.