Quotation is Imam Ash-Shafi'i's Poetry

Abstract

Quotation is an art which flourished with the rising sun of Islam because it was strongly attached to the Holy Qur'an and tradition. Its beginning to be used in poetry was at the hands of the Prophet's companions and it continued in the succeeding ages. Imam Ash-Shafi'i wrote numerous outstanding poems which were kept in peoples' memory and the researchers should explore their linguistic and rhetorical beauty as well as musicality. It is a fact that researchers have been concerned with his religious writings rather than with his poetry. This paper is an attempt at exploring the art of quotation as it recurred in Arabic writings on rhetorics. Imam Ash-Shafi'i lived in an era of those whose poetry was often quoted and he was a fluent Quraishi Arab whose language was not spoiled by foreign accents. He combined both poetry and principles of Jurisprudence science. The paper concludes that Ash-Shafi'is quotations have their particular nature and they were unprecedented due to influence of Jurisprudence and its rules.