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, term in rhetoric commonly used in the sense of metaphor. This term is among those most frequently discussed by authors of all periods and it is impossible to give a complete account of all definitions, Systems of classification, and technical terms, many of which are found in texts that do not specifically deal with rhetoric. The following is an attempt to outline the views of some representative authors. In the early period the term istiʿāra is used occasionally in the sense of “borrowing of a theme by one author from another” (see, for instance, Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, al-ʿIḳd al-fārid …

(a.), also called īhām , roughly “double entendre”, “Doppelsinnwitz”, a frequently discussed figure in Arabic literary theory. Based on is̲h̲tirāk , homonymy, the figure depends on the “nearer” meaning ( maʿnā ḳarīb ) of a noun, ad̲j̲ective, or a verbal form “hiding” ( warrā ) the “farther” meaning ( maʿnā baʿīd ) intended by the poet. Personal names and place names may also hide this farther meaning. The tawriya is also known by a confusing number of other names: tawhīm , tak̲h̲yīl [ q.v.], tawd̲j̲īh , mug̲h̲ālaṭa maʿnawiyya , etc. Probably the first scholar to devote a monograph to the tawri…

b. D̲j̲aʿfar al-Kātib al-Bag̲h̲dādī , Abu ’l-Farad̲j̲ , philologist, historian, and one of the first scholars to introduce the systematic study of the figures of speech in Arabic literature. The date of his birth is nowhere mentioned and may have been as early as around the year 260/873-4. He died at an uncertain date which is variously given as “during the reign of al-Muḳtadir” (i.e. not later than 320/932), 328/939-40, and 337/948. The dates “shortly after 300” and 310 cannot be correct (see below). Almost every aspect of Ḳudāma’s biography, his work, and his personality as a…

, improvising, extemporizing a poem or a speech. Ibn Ras̲h̲īḳ ( ʿUmda , i, 131), followed by Azdī ( Badāʾiʿ , p. 5 of the Būlāḳ ed.) connects the term with the meaning “to be easy”, “to flow down” implied in the expression s̲h̲aʿr rad̲j̲il , “lank hair”, or with irtid̲j̲āl al-biʾr , “descending into a well on one’s feet”, i.e., without the help of a rope, and the synonym of irtid̲j̲āl , badīha , with the root badaʾa , “to begin”, substituting hāʾ for hamza . According to these two authors, the difference between irtid̲j̲āl and badīha is that whereas in the case of irtid̲j̲āl the poet does not prepa…

, Abū D̲j̲aʿfar Aḥmad al-G̲h̲arnāṭī (or al-Ilbīrī) al-Mālikī, d. 779/1377, Andalusī scholar, author of al-Ḥulla al-siyarāʾ , a voluminous commentary on the Badīʿiyya (a poem praising the Prophet Muḥammad while illustrating the badīʿ [ q.v.]) of his companion, Ibn D̲j̲ābir (d. 780/1378-9). The Badīʿiyya itself and important grammatical and lexicographical sections of the book have been published by ʿAlī Abū Zayd, Beirut 1405/1985, but numerous historical and geographical data, poetry, as well as a wealth of information in the domain of adab [ q.v.] in the widest sense of the te…

, introduction, prologue, a term in rhetoric. In Ḳazwīnī’s Talk̲h̲īṣ al-miftāḥ (published under the title Matn al-talk̲h̲īṣ , Cairo n.d., 125 and 127), its extended version, the Īḍāḥ (ed. Muḥ. ʿAbd al-Munʿim K̲h̲afād̲j̲ī, vi, 147-50, 154), and the various works based on the Talk̲h̲īṣ , the ibtidāʾ is mentioned, along with the tak̲h̲alluṣ , “transition” [ q.v.], and the intihāʾ , “conclusion” [ q.v.], as one of the three sections of the poem or composition which should receive particular attention and should conform to certain criteria of style and content. …

(a.), plur. ḳawāfin , term in prosody, meaning “rhyme”. Goldziher ( Abh . zur Arabischen Philologie , Leiden 1896, i, 83-105; cf. R. Blachère, Deuxième contribution, in Arabica vi (1959), 141) has shown that the word meant originally “lampoon”, then “line of poetry”, “poem” and, that these earlier senses survived in Islamic times after the word had also come to be used in the technical sense of “rhyme”. He derives ḳāfiya from ḳafan , “nape of the neck” (and the corresponding verb ḳafā , “to hit the nape of the neck”) and draws attention to passages in whi…

, the greatest pre-Islamic poet of the tribe of Tamīm;al-Aṣmaʿī frequently praises and comments on his poetry; in contrast the early anthologies, except the Ḥamāsa of al-Buḥturī, do not mention him at all. Whether al-Farazdaḳ, when he boasts of having "inherited from the family of Aws a tongue like poison", means our poet, cannot be ascertained. Fragments of some length do not appear before the time of Ibn al-Sikki̊t, who probably wrote a commentary to his dīwān , and quotes him in his lexicographical work. With the early critics Aws was famous for his description of the (wild) …

, “end, conclusion”, a term in rhetoric. In Ḳazwīnī’s Talk̲h̲īṣ al-miftāḥ (published under the title Matn al-talk̲h̲īṣ , Cairo n.d., 126-7), its extended version, the Īḍāḥ (ed. Muḥ. ʿAbd al-Munʿim K̲h̲afād̲j̲ī, Cairo 1369/1950, vi, 153-4), the various works based on the Talk̲h̲īṣ , as well as in some earlier texts, the intihāʾ is mentioned along with the ibtidāʾ , “introduction”, “prologue” [ q.v.], and the tak̲h̲alluṣ , “transition” [ q.v.], as one of the three sectons of the poem or prose composition (some mention also the k̲h̲uṭba , “sermon”) which should …

, mythical person, about whom two entirely different traditions can easily be distinguished. According to the first, he was a T̲h̲aḳafite of Ṭāʾif who guided Abraha [ q.v.] on his ¶ way to Mecca. He died in al-Mug̲h̲ammas [ q.v.] and was buried there. It was the custom to stone his tomb. (For a similar custom cf. al-d̲j̲amra .) The story is sometimes told with the object of slandering the T̲h̲aḳafites. The earliest mention would be a verse of Ḥassān b. T̲h̲ābit (ed. Hirschfeld, lxii, l), if it is not an anti-T̲h̲aḳafite falsificat…

, literally: “strange”, “uncommon”, a technical term in philology and in the science of tradition. As a term in philology it means: “rare, unfamiliar (and consequently obscure) expressions” (in which sense the terms waḥs̲h̲ī and ḥūs̲h̲ī are also used), and frequently occurs in the titles of books, mostly such as deal with unfamiliar expressions in the Ḳurʾān and in the Tradition (books carrying the titles G̲h̲arīb al-Ḳurʿān and G̲h̲arīb al-Ḥadīt̲h̲ seem to have existed as early as the second century). The term also occurs in works on literar…

, Abū ʿAlī Muḥmmad b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Muẓaffar , literary critic and philologist of the 4th/10th century, who died in Bag̲h̲dād on 27 Rabīʿ II 388/26 April 998. Though the name of his father is sometimes given as al-Ḥusayn, the testimony of Abū ʿAlī al-Muḥassin al-Tanūk̲h̲ī ( Nis̲h̲wār al-muḥāḍara , ed. ʿA. al-S̲h̲ālid̲j̲ī, Beirut 1391-3/1971-3, iii, 14) and of al-K̲h̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī, who received traditions from al-Ḥātimī through Abū ʿAlī’s son, Abu ’l-Ḳāsim al-Tanūk̲h̲ī (see Taʾrīk̲h̲ Bag̲h̲dād , ii, 214, 356, xi, 231) can probably be trusted. …

, “observing rules that are not prescribed”, term commonly used for the adoption of a second, or even a third or fourth, invariable consonant preceding the rhyme consonant ( rawī ) which, at least in classical poetry, remains itself invariable [see ḳāfiya , iv, 412a, middle]. The term is also used in dealing with rhymed prose ( sad̲j̲ ) [ q.v.]. In later Arabic and Persian literary theory the term covers not only the classical luzūm , but also a variety of other devices which have nothing to do with the end rhyme. Common synonyms of luzūm are iʿnāt and iltizām , and severa…

( k̲h̲aṭīb dimas̲h̲ḳ ), d̲j̲alāl al-dīn abū ʿabd allāh muḥammad b. ʿabd al-raḥmān b. ʿumar (666-739/1268-1338), Chief ḳāḍī , in Syria and Egypt and author of two famous compendiums on rhetoric. Almost nothing is known about his early life. Most biographers mention that he was born in Mosul and that his elder brother, Imām al-Dīn ʿUmar, was born in Tabrīz in 653/1255. If it is true that the two brothers were related to ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Rāfiʿī (d. 623/1266; see Brockelmann, I, 393, S I, 678), as is reported by Abu ’l-Fidāʾ, al-Muk̲h̲taṣar fī ak̲h̲bār al-bas̲h̲ar (Cair…

, two of the three categories into which, since the time of al-Sakkākī (d. 626/1229), the study of rhetoric has often been divided. 1. In Arabic. The Miftāḥ al-ʿulūm by al-Sakkākī [ q.v.], where the two terms appear for the first time, was too confusing in its arrangement, and too obscure and at times self-contradictory to be of practical use to most students of rhetoric. It consisted of a section on grammar, a section on syntax, a section on the ʿilm al-maʿānī and the ʿilm al-bayān , and two supplements to its maʿānī section, one on demonstration ( istidlāl ), and one o…

means to take a ḳabas , a live coal or a light, from another’s fire (Ḳurʾān XX, 10; XXVII, 7; LVII, 13); hence to seek knowledge ( ʿilm ) and, as a technical term in rhetoric, to quote specific words from the Ḳurʾān or from Traditions but without indicating these as quoted. Some scholars limit the term to the use of Ḳurʾānic phrases, while others extend it to the use of terminology from fiḳh and other sciences, but all agree that iḳtibās is found both in poetry and in prose. If the source is indicated and the quotation is put into verse the figure is called ʿaḳd , binding. A related figure is talmīḥ …

(a.) authorization, licence. When used in its technical meaning, this word means, in the strict sense, the third of the eight methods of receiving the transmission of a ḥadīt̲h̲ [ q.v.] (the various ways are set out precisely in W. Marçais, Taqrîb , 115-26). It means in short the fact that an authorized guarantor of a text or of a whole book (his own work or a work received through a chain of transmitters going back to the first transmitter or to the author) gives a person the authorization to transmit it in his tu…

(a.), verbal noun meaning “seizure”, “grasping”, “contraction”, “abstention”, etc., and used in the special vocabulary of various disciplines. i.—In fiḳh the word signifies taking possession of, handing over. In Mālikī law ḥiyāza is more frequently used. Tasallum is also employed to mean the act of handing over. Taking possession is accomplished by the material transfer of the thing when movable goods are involved; by occupation when it is a question of real estate, but also symbolically by the handing over of the keys or title deeds of the property. Ḳabḍ only …