Arabic rhetoric and Qur'anic exegesis

Abstract

The evolution of technical terms in the Arabic science of rhetoric illustrates remarkalby its gradual adaptation to the exigencies of scriputural interpretation.Proliferation of rhetorical figures in the writings of the late medieval scholiasts appears to be a consequence not so much of the Qur'ān. In many of these figures a pre-exegetic existence can be discerned; others would seem to be the invention of industrious mufassirum. For the former it is sometimes possible to determine an approximate date of adaptation: the point at which the profane function of a rhetorical figure was abandoned, or at least relegated to an inferior position, in favour of its application to Qur'anic exegesis. An illustration of this process is provided by the figure called madhhab kalāmī, whose evolution I attempted to describe in a recent study. There it was seen that the figure treated by early rhetoricians shared its name, but neither its content nor its function, with that examined and applied to the Qur'ā by the later schoolmen. While the result of this metamorphosis became firmly established in the treatment of badī' by al-Qazwīnī (d. 738/1256) and his successors, it is in the earlier work of Ibn Abi 'l-Isba' (d. 654002F;1256) where we find the observation that although Ibn al-mu'tazz (d. 295002F;908) had denied the presence in the Qur'ān of Madhhab kalāmī, the Holy Book was in fact full of it; and his examples fit perfectly the scholastic interpretation of the figure.