Our panel is discussing the huge importance that ideals of linguistic excellence and clarity had in the intellectual culture of the medieval Islamicate world. These ideals were particularly important for al-R??ib al-I?fah?n?, and his relationship to them is the subject of my paper. He was both an ad?b (litterateur) whose two adab collections have the word bal??ah in their titles, and at the same time a member of the ?ulam?’ (scholars/intellectuals) whose work in ethics and exegesis required clear definitions, explanations and positions. Like Ab? Hil?l al-?Askar?, al-R??ib distinguishes bal??ah, which involves the meaning of words (ma??n?), from fa???ah (eloquence) which involves only the words themselves (alf??). Unlike fa???ah, bal??ah means that words and their meanings are true. For al-R??ib, bal??ah is, inter alia, “the pursuit of truth in words”. How does al-R??ib square his understanding of bal??ah as defined by truth with his collection and analysis of poetry in his adab compendia and his definition of poetry as an art that puts falsity into the form of truth and is only ever truthful by accident? Furthermore, when it comes to describing the inimitability (i???z) of the Quran, why does al-R??ib not use the standard of bal??ah (well-expressed truth)? According to al-R??ib, the Quran is inimitable because humans cannot provide the information that it provides, and also because God actively prevents humans from trying. Why is there no linguistic dimension, fa???ah, bal??ah or otherwise, to al-R??ib’s understanding of Quranic inimitability? Al-R??ib al-I?fah?n? lived in the area of I?fah?n from 954 to 1021 (343-412 H.). Medieval biography and modern scholarship in European languages on him is scarce. This state of affairs has not been helped by confusion about when he lived, a confusion successfully resolved in the last few decades by scholars writing in Arabic (notably ?Abd al-Ra?m?n al-S?r?s? and I?s?n ?Abb??). Despite his failure to make a mark on the biographical tradition, his Quranic Glossary (Mufrad?t Alf?? al-Qur’?n) and his major adab compendium (Mu???ar?t al-Udab?’ wa Mu??war?t al-Šu?ar?’ wa-l-Bula??’) proved popular across centuries, and his ethical work (al-?ar??ah il? Mak?rim al-Šar??ah) was so admired by al-?az?l? that it found its way, albeit unattributed, into the I?y?’ ?Ul?m al-D?n and the M?z?n al-?Amal (over half of the latter work is copied from al-R??ib’s ?ar??ah).

The eleventh century H?alab? scholar, politician and poet, Ibn Sin?n al-Khaf?j?, student of the famous Ab? al-?Al?? al-Ma?arr?, owes much of his acknowledgment to early thirteenth century’s D?iy?? al-D?n Ibn al-Ath?r. The latter, in his introduction to al-Mathal al-S??ir, adverts to the work of Ibn Sin?n titled Sirr al-Fa???a ‘The Secret of Eloquence’ as one of the two most important books on what Ibn al-Ath?r calls ?Ilm al-bay?n ‘the science of clarity [of expression]’. Especially consequential are regarded al-Khaf?j?’s deliberations on ‘sounds’, ‘phonemes’ and ‘the single word’, of which the latter is markedly influential in Ibn al-Ath?r’s voluminous work. And yet despite the association of the treatment of ‘the eloquence of the single word’ with al-Khaf?j? – to which indeed the entry Fa???a in the Encyclopaedia of Islam may attest – his overall approach to the study of kal?m ‘discourse’ is otherwise marginally treated, very much until this day (his absence from I?s?n ?Abb?s’ monumental survey of the history of Arabic literary criticism is a case in point). The aim of this paper is to closely analyze al-Khaf?j?’s Sirr al-Fa???a so as to understand its structure and logic, try to identify its sources and establish both its uniqueness and, no less important, commonness. Somewhat along the lines of George Kanazi’s study of K. al-S?in??atayn of Ab? Hil?l al-?Askar?, this paper ultimately purposes to situate the work of al-Khaf?j? within the pre-Sakk?kian, or pre-systematic, ‘Bal?gha’ tradition. The conception of Bal?gha or Fa???a as an ?ilm ‘science’ is already quite explicit in Sirr al-Fa???a, although al-Khaf?j?’s implicit objects of study are the distinctly delineated crafts of Ta?l?f al-kal?m ‘the composing of discourse’ and Naqd al-kal?m ‘the criticizing of discourse’. Though usually not exhibiting original data, and indeed being overshadowed by his contemporary ?Abd al-Q?hir al-Jurj?n?, I intend to show al-Khaf?j?’s holistic attitude toward the study of eloquence, encompassing the ontological understanding of language (inspired by Mu?tazilite thought) in addition to the linguistic one. Especially intriguing I find the role grammar plays within al-Khaf?j?’s theory of discourse, as a concept like Isti??ra ‘metaphor’ is subsumed under the category termed Wa?? al-alf?z maw?i?ah? ‘putting words in their [proper] place’ – a designation carrying a strong syntactic connotation and dating all the way back to S?bawayhi. Through this question I hope to expound the idea of the grammaticality of discourse in al-Khaf?j?’s work, pertaining to semantic and pragmatic grammaticality rather than a syntactic one.

Renowned later-day Mu?tazilite theologian and exegete, Mah?mud ibn ?Umar al-Zamakhshar? (d. 1144) introduced into the field of Qur’a?nic exegesis a hermeneutical tool that he termed takhy?l. Previously, the term had been used in two separate fields: those of logical poetics and poetic imagery. Thus, for the philosopher al-Fa?ra?b? (d. 950) takhy?l denoted “the evocation of images by means of figurative language,” while rhetorician ?Abd al-Qa?hir al-Jurja?n? (d. ca. 1080) used it to refer to untrue, fantasy-based explanations (such as etiologies and analogies) in the realm of make-believe. Al-Zamakhshar?, however, appeared to have coined a new, distinct usage of the term, which he situated within the field of rhetorical imagery. The fact that he did not fully elaborate his theory of takhyil resulted in it being met, variously, with confusion, suspicion and puzzlement. Nor has modern scholarship, hitherto, studied this in detail. My examination of a wide range of verses to which al-Zamakhshar? applied the notion of takhy?l, in his work of Qur’a?nic exegesis the Kashsha?f, suggests that the concept emerged from a combination of two factors: strong rationalist Mu?tazilite theological underpinnings, along with that school’s emphasis on the eloquence of the Qur’a?n as a prominent aspect of its divine inimitability (i?ja?z). I adduce that the Mu?tazilite advocacy for exercising the intellect to unlock subtle aspects of eloquence in the Qur’a?n led al-Zamakhshar? to posit takhy?l as a new rhetorical category. It also appears that he himself was still exploring the limits of Qur’a?nic interpretation and its intersection with general literary interpretation. In order to situate al-Zamakhshar?’s endeavor within the larger context of Qur’a?nic interpretation, it is appropriate to explore its reception and interpretation within Sunn? scholarship. There is, however, a paucity of surviving materials that directly engage al-Zamakhshar?’s exegetical use of takhy?l. I therefore turn to al-Bayd?a?w?’s (d. ca. 1290) exegesis (which is essentially a Sunn? redaction of the Kashshaf), along with some its super-commentaries, particularly al-Khafa?j?’s (d. 1659) and al-Qu?naw?’s (d. 1780/1). I also obtain useful insights from two other Sunn? exegeses: Al-A?lu?s?’s (d. 1853/4) Ru?h? al-Ma?a?n? and (to a limited extent) al-Ra?z?’s (d. 1210) Al-Tafs?r al-Kab?r. The aggregate of information gleaned from these Sunn? sources shows that al-Zamakhshar?’s takhy?l, although objectionable on various counts, nevertheless found some acceptance (albeit to varying degrees) within more ubiquitous frameworks of Qur’a?nic interpretation.

The emerging Arabic-Islamic book culture of the third/ninth century affected — among many other disciplines of knowledge — even the most oral of Arabic arts: poetry. Poets improvised more often with the aid of writing, poems were exchanged by letter or on inscribed objects, and writing itself, its tools, techniques, and expertise figured more prominently within the repertoire of poetic motifs. These trends were supported by the introduction, at the end of the second/eighth century, of a cheap and abundant writing material, namely paper, as well as by the growth of secretarial handbooks and poetic manuals, which placed the knowhow of written composition at the disposal of a growing public, largely constituted by the urban elite. The question is not so much the newness of the written format, as other supports of writing (papyrus and vellum) had existed, and the paper codex, notebook and letter were adopted almost immediately after their introduction to Iraq, as their ubiquitous mention in contemporary sources shows. Rather, the distribution among the various old and new modes, consulting books vs. memory, or writing vs. speaking, are of interest. The same holds true for the different purposes for which the modes were used, whether for short term or long term storage, for wide dissemination or to reach a small limited audience; and finally, which were the society’s attitudes to the old and new media? As (recently translated) scholarship by Gregor Schoeler has shown, we are dealing not with a unidirectional shift from the oral to the written, but a coexistence of, and alternation among, several options (not unlike the variety of Internet culture). The present paper offers a preliminary survey of attitudes to media in records of the literary life from the late second/eighth and third/ninth centuries.

The Mamluk period was a golden age of encyclopaedic and lexicographic literature. It witnessed the composition of large-scale scribal manuals and adab collections by figures such as Shih?b al-D?n al-Nuwayr?, Ibn Fa?l All?h al-‘Umar?, and al-Qalqashand?, as well as enormous dictionaries, such as the famous Lis?n al-‘Arab of Ibn Man??r. While serving different functions and containing different materials, these works were nonetheless engaged in a shared project of navigating, organizing, and making sense of an enormous lexical corpus and the literary patrimony that proceeded from it. In al-Nuwayr?’s thirty-volume encyclopaedia, Nih?yat al-Arab f? Fun?n al-Adab, for example, the reader encounters a mind-boggling variety of topics. Marrying the thematic organization of earlier glossaries such as al-Tha‘?lib?’s Fiqh al-lugha with the all-encompassing ambition of a comprehensive dictionary, the Nih?ya contains everything from taxonomies of cloud formations, to long lists of synonyms and distinctions for different kinds of eyebrows, thunderbolts, skin pigments, time-keeping instruments, fishing boats, waterwheels, hair dyes, hundreds of animals, birds, flowers and trees, and much more. As such, the work is a textual mirror of the known universe, an attempt to map the Arabic lexicon onto the social, economic, and intellectual landscapes of an entire civilization. My paper is dedicated to answering the question: “Where does the ethic of eloquence (bal?gha) fit into all of this?” In other words, to what extent did considerations of a prescriptive nature concerning the character of praiseworthy speech intrude upon the work of a Mamluk encyclopaedist such as al-Nuwayr?? Did his work amount to collecting choice bits of verse to illustrate ‘the best that has been said’, or was he engaged in a different project? Assuming that a cultural ideal of “bal?gha” had at least something to do with his motivations, is it still not relevant to wonder what bal?gha meant to al-Nuwayr?, living centuries after many of the poets he anthologized? Simply put, did bal?gha mean the same thing to Mamluk-era encyclopaedists as it did to Abbasid poets? To answer these questions, I will compare selections from al-Nuwayr?’s work with parallel chapters in earlier texts from the adab tradition (such as Ibn Qutayba’s ‘Uy?n al-Akhb?r, Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi’s al-‘Iqd al-Far?d, and Ibn ?amd?n’s Tadhkira), demonstrating the ways in which the concept of bal?gha was both susceptible and impervious to historical development.