During the 4th/10th century, the notion of iʽjāz al-Qur’ān (the inimitability of the Qur’ān), which had long circulated among the Muslim community, found clear articulation in a number of key works on the topic. While the treatise of Abu ’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī al-Rummānī (276-384/889-94), al-Nukat fī iʽjāz al-Qur’ān, which is among them, shares many elements with works by Abū Sulaymān al-Khaṭṭābī, Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī and, somewhat later, ʽAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjani, it stands out for its inclusion of topics not treated in these seminal works. One such topic is contained in al- Rummānī’s chapter on al-taṣrīf, in which this Muʽtazilite grammarian, rhetorician, and theologian borrows a term traditionally applied by grammarians to refer to the morphology and morphonology of individual words, to treat, if only briefly, whole sections of Qur’ānic discourse. This paper lays out al- Rummānī’s treatment of al-taṣrīf, and after discussing its origins in the field of grammar, examines how it relates to other sections of al-Nukat. Because of al-Rummānī’s emphasis on the interconnectedness of meanings, particular attention is paid to his treatment of repetition within the Qur’ān and to the implications of al-taṣrīf and related concepts for discussions of the stylistics of the text. The paper further questions how al-Rummānī’s perspective on al-taṣrīf meshes or contrasts with the concept of naẓm, which was more prevalent among scholars of iʽjāz al-Qur’ān, and postulates about its absence from the work of otherwise like-minded scholars in this field. The work of later thinkers in the field of iʽjāz al-Qur’ān and related Qur’anic sciences is surveyed to highlight echoes of al-Rummānī’s views, with and without attribution, and trace the influence of his emphasis on narrative construction and the interconnectedness of meanings within the Qur’an. Throughout this paper, the theological leanings of the various authors are analyzed as the main arbiter of whether and how issues of textual unity and narrative construction were discussed. Finally, we examine how al-Rummānī’s insights are suggestive of those of selected modern Arab and western analysts of Qur’ānic style.

This paper analyzes Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 1013) approach to the issue of Qur’ānic inimitability as presented in his book entitled I‘jāz al-Qur’ān. Al-Bāqillānī is known as the foremost Mālikī jurist of his day and an Ash‘arī theologian who contributed to the major theological debates of the time. Given his stature, it is surprising that his work on Qur’ānic style has received limited attention. G.E. von Grunebaum translated a section of al-Bāqillānī’s treatise, I‘jāz al-Qur’ān, and penned a short introduction to it, however his work deals with only one part of al-Bāqillānī’s long and complex text. This paper amplifies our understanding of al-Bāqillānī’s contribution to the debate about the Qur’ān’s uniqueness by investigating neglected parts of his treatise and emphasizing his theological perspective. Through a fresh and more comprehensive analysis of the text, this paper seeks to contextualize al-Bāqillānī’s text and situate it more precisely in i‘jāz discussions. I also make use of al-Bāqillānī’s other treatises to contextualize his thought on i‘jāz al-Qur’ān, including al-Intiṣār li’l-Qur’ān [Victory Belongs to the Qur’ān] and al-Inṣāf fī-mā yajib al-i‘tiqād wa-lā yajūz al-jahl bihi [The Just Treatment of What It Is Necessary to Believe and Ignorance Is not Allowed]. Indeed, I argue that as a theologian rather than a literary critic, al-Bāqillānī draws the i‘jāz al-Qur’ān discourse away from the domain of the literary by rejecting the claim that the Qur’ān’s uniqueness can be captured in literary theoretical terms. In his treatise on the subject, al-Bāqillānī provides extensive literary analysis of classical Arabic poems in order to show the Qur’ān’s linguistic superiority in comparison to human-authored texts. He concludes, however, that although the Qur’ān is in ‘clear Arabic’ understandable to humans, it has a unique quality that cannot be described in terms of human-made categories such as particular literary devices and rhetorical figures. While such categories may be able to describe in technical terms what items are found in the Qur’ān, they cannot account for the miraculous inimitability of the text. In emphasizing the ineffable quality of the Qur’ān, al-Bāqillānī is making a theological point that inherently limits its applicability in the realm of literary analysis. This positions his treatise in contrast to those of some of his contemporaries who engage wholeheartedly in taxonomical interpretations of the Qur’ān’s literary devices. This paper argues for reading al-Bāqillānī’s treatise as an Ash‘ari response that focalizes the unfathomable Divine source of the text.

Abū Bakr ‘Abd al-Qāhir b. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Jurjānī (d.1078), recognized Shāfi‘ī jurisconsult, Ash‘arī theologian (mutakallim), and grammarian, was one of the most prominent literary scholars of his time. Most widely known in the field of classical Arabic rhetoric (balāgha), he is the author of Dalā’il i‘jāz al-Qur’ān (Proofs of the Inimitability of the Qur’ān) and Asrār al-balāgha (The Secrets of Eloquence), two major works in the field of i‘jāz al-Qur’ān (inimitability of the Qur’ān) and Arabic literary theory in general. This paper focuses on al-Jurjānī’s neglected treatise, al-Risāla al-shāfiya (The Epistle that Leaves Nothing to be Desired), and through careful rhetorical and content analysis, undertakes to characterize its content and compare it with his two iconic works. In al-Risāla al-shāfiya, al-Jurjānī emphasizes the notion of composition (naẓm), the same tenet he asserts in al-Dalā’il, and argues that eloquence does not reside in individual words, but rather in how they are ordered in the construction of discourse. Basing his arguments on composition, al-Jurjānī downplays the validity of all other explanations regarding the inimitability of the Qur’ān, such as the notion of divine intervention (ṣarfa), as he does in Dalā’il. My textual analysis of al-Jurjānī’s manner of presentation in al-Risāla al-shāfiya reveals, however, that this treatise differs from Dalā’il in its targeted audience and that it was in fact intended for a general audience that possessed a basic level of knowledge in rhetoric and Muslim tradition, rather than an audience of specialists. For example, al-Jurjānī uses stories (akhbār) to demonstrate how the prophet confronted the Quraysh, including accounts of people insistent upon reviling the Prophet, ridiculing his claim to prophethood, and challenging the divine nature of the Qur’ān. This “story-telling” narrative approach, which minimizes the difficulty of his subtle thinking and renders it more accessible to a general educated public, is not prevalent in either of his two major works. This study of al-Risāla al-shāfiya, a curiously neglected text in the field of i‘jāz al-Qur’ān, thus provides insight into the broader historical context of i‘jāz discussion and highlights its articulation on a more popular level than is customarily observed.

In the first part of my paper, I argue that Ibn Taymiyyah managed to develop an eccentric theory of language that is suitable for his version of nominalism. I start by sketching the main elements of what I call “the traditional theory of language”, basing my sketch on Qāḍī ʽAbd al-Ğabbār's treatment, and showing the problems that it creates for any nominalist. I show also how this theory achieved almost a consensus among Muslim philosophers and theologians. Then I discuss the main doctrine in Ibn Taymiyyah’s theory of language, as it appears in his criticism of the well-established veridicality-tropicality dichotomy. This doctrine revolves around Ibn Taymiyyah's assertion that there is no convention before use. While this theory of language suits Ibn Taymiyyah's nominalism, it creates, however, its own set of problems. After dealing with some of these, I discuss the major problem facing Ibn Taymiyyah's doctrine, namely the need for a new theory of reference. I show how Ibn Taymiyyah, by way of extending his doctrine, and by modifying the concept of "common scope", manages to develop a theory of reference that dispenses with the need for universals. In the second part of my paper, I deal with some of the theological implications of Ibn Taymiyyah's theory of language. I show here how Ibn Taymiyyah's theory stands as the cornerstone of his theological project. Regardless of his clear theological motivations, Ibn Taymiyyah meant for his theology to be the only valid corollary to his theory of language, rather than the other way around. Nevertheless, Ibn Taymiyyah falls short of that. To show that, I carefully go back to Ğurğānī's formulation of the dichotomy, rather than the one developed by Sakkākī and later commentators. While accepting the fact that Ğurğānī is an adherent to the traditional theory of language, I suggest that his formulation can be re-established within Ibn Taymiyyah's linguistic framework. This may pave the way for a different theology from the one adopted by Ibn Taymiyyah, while accepting his premises. This means that while Ibn Taymiyyah's theology requires accepting his theory of language, his theory of language can be the basis for different theologies. It means also that attacking Ibn Taymiyyah's theology does not involve necessarily stripping his theory of language from any merit of its own.

The second book of Aristotle’s Organon, the Peri Hermeneias (Fī al-‘Ibāra), deals with theories of simple and compound utterances, of propositions formed from them, and of the mutual logical implications of such propositions. Generally speaking, though topics such as homonymy and intention are discussed in this book, language is treated not as a system of communication, but as divested of particular meanings and as symbolic for logical operations. The Arabo-Islamic tradition of logic in the pre-modern period retains this attitude to theories of language for much of its career; and this makes sense, given that the subject matter of logic was understood to be second order concepts, which need only have an accidental relation to ordinary language. In the seventeenth century, however, a fascinating transformation in the treatment of logical utterances takes place in the Indian logic text Sullam al-‘ulūm. The author of this text, Muḥibballāh al-Bihārī (d. 1707), and his commentators and glossators expend a great deal of energy presenting logical propositions in terms of theories of language developed in the field of poetics and uṣūl al-fiqh. In other words, they invest logical propositions with characteristics of ordinary communicative language—such as metaphor and allusion—that do not allow for the classical rules of logical implication; and this development, in turn, makes the entire structure of formal logic vulnerable. This paper examines the theory of language presented in this pre-modern text and the strategies that were devised to neutralize the effects of this theory on the larger project of formal logic.