Rhetoric and the Qur’ān
The Qur’ān has been judged in Islamic tradition as inimitable; indeed a dogma emerged in the third/ninth century holding that the Qur’ān is, linguistically and stylistically, far superior to all other literary ¶ productions in the Arabic language (q.v.; see also literature and the qur’ān). Although the belief in the “inimitability of the Qur’ān” ( i`jāz al-Qur’ān, see inimitability) does not rely exclusively on formal criteria, it has been widely received as a statement about the literary qualities of the Qur’ān both in traditional scholarly literature on Arabic rhetoric (see Heinrichs, Rhetoric and poetics) and in modern scholarship (cf. Bint al-Shāṭi’, al-I`jāz al-bayānī lil-Qur’ān). Kermani (Gott ist schön) has contextualized and traced this claim of inimitability for the Islamic scripture, which was a later development in qur’ānic poetics, back to the early strata of Muslim collective memory. As against that, some recent scholars have completely dismissed the notion of i`jāz as being rooted in the event of the Qur’ān. Some have done so based on the assumption of the impossibility of proving that the entire qur’ānic corpus is genuine, and thus maintain that the Qur’ān does not admit of any conclusions drawn from its self-referential statements. Others have — on the basis of a close reading of the so-called challenge verses ( āyāt al-taḥaddī) — reached the conclusion that the qur’ānic challenges should be viewed as part of the indoctrination of the believers rather than a genuine polemic (see provocation; belief and unbelief). The qur’ānic arguments viewed from such a perspective appear topical rather than real, the interlocutors of the qur’ānic speaker being reduced from real to merely imagined, fictitious adversaries (Radscheit, Die koranische Herausforderung; see opposition to muḥammad). That assumption, presupposing a strict separation between the biography of the Prophet and the Qur’ān, sets a decisive epistemic course, particularly in a case where matters of prophetic self-image are at stake (see sīra and the qur’ān;prophets and¶ prophethood ): What may have been an existentially significant self-testimony of the Prophet, when read as a true challenge cast against real adversaries, is reduced to a merely rhetorical pattern, an instance of boasting about doctrinal achievements attained.
In view of the internal evidence, enhanced by external evidence (see for new discoveries concerning the interaction between the Prophet and his doctrinal and political adversaries as attested in secular literature, Imhof, Religiöser Wandel), the author of this article does not share the pessimism of those qur’ānic scholars who totally negate the legitimacy of drawing connections between the biography of the Prophet and the Qur’ān, provided this biography is not understood in the limited sense of a history of the Prophet's personal development. A close reading of the qur’ānic texts — not as a collection of literary remains left by a no longer feasible charismatic figure and later framed as apologetic-polemic discussions by the redactors (see collection of the qur’ān; post-enlightenment academic study of the qur’ān), but as a sequence of testimonies to an ongoing and progressive communication process (see form and structure of the qur’ān) between the Prophet and his audience(s) — promises insights into a development of rhetorical phenomena discernible in the process of the qur’ānic genesis.
The extraordinary Islamic claim of inimitability (i`jāz) will be revisited in the context of a synopsis of some particularly striking qur’ānic stylistic phenomena. In view of the scanty scholarly work done in the field of qur’ānic rhetoric, the following article is limited to an outline of diverse aspects that deserve to be studied. As such, it aims at tracing developments in the rhetorical self-expression of the qur’ānic message rather than assembling compre-¶ hensive exemplative material. It will therefore not attempt to study the rhetorical character of the diverse qur’ānic subgenres such as story-telling (see Welch, Formulaic features; see also narratives; literary structures of the qur’ān), polemic-apologetic debate (see Radscheit, Die koranische Herausforderung; McAuliffe, Debate with them; see also debate and disputation; polemic and polemical language), or hymnal sections (see Baumstark, Jüdischer und christlicher Gebetstypus), nor will it examine the qur’ānic style as such (see Nöldeke, Zur Sprache des Korans; Müller, Untersuchungen; see also language and style of the qur’ān). Rather, the following will try to contextualize striking rhetorical phenomena in the text within the qur’ānic communication process. The discussion will proceed from an examination of the stylistic implications of the early allegation that qur’ānic speech should be the speech of a soothsayer or seer ( kāhin, pl. kuhhān or kahana; see soothsayers), to an inquiry into the relationship between qur’ānic speech and that of a poet ( shā`ir, pl. shu`arā’; see poets and poetry), with particular emphasis on the stylistic characteristics of the early Meccan sūras (q.v.; see also chronology and the qur’ān). In the third part it will turn briefly to the rhetorical issues of the later — more biblically inspired — parts of the Qur’ān (see jews and judaism; christians and christianity; people of the book; children of israel; scripture and the qur’ān).
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The Qur’ān and its local literary forerunners: Kāhin and shā`ir speech
Already at the time of the Prophet, controversy over the new liturgical communication arose among its listeners, as to the character of the speech recited by the Prophet. Early sūras transmit various insinuations raised against the Prophet and ¶ refuted in the text, the most general and unspecified being that he is a kāhin, a “soothsayer” ( q 52:29: fa-dhakkir fa-mā anta bi-ni`mati rabbika bi-kāhinin wa-lā majnūnin), a poet ( q 52:30: am yaqūlūna shā`irun, natarab-baṣu bihi rayba l-manūni), or a madman, majnūn ( q 68:2: mā anta bi-ni`mati rabbika bi-majnūnin), i.e. a person possessed by (inspiring) demons (jinn) in general (see insanity; jinn). Another kind of denunciation motivated by the refusal to accept particular messages consisted in calling his recitations fabrications ( q 52:33: am yaqūlūna: taqawwalahu, bal lā yu’minūna), tales or legends ( q 83:13: asāṭīr al-awwalīn), all of which could equally well have been produced by other humans or were no more than repetitions of earlier-told tales (Boullata, Rhetorical interpretation; see generations; lie; forgery). Whereas the latter-mentioned verdict may simply be explained as resulting from the desire not to be bothered with the new message, the references to the two types of public spokesmen, soothsayer and poet, appear more serious (see pre-islamic arabia and the qur’ān). They are not totally arbitrary since a number of sūras employ artistic devices that are usually associated with the speech of inspired individuals.
This concerns particularly the speech of the pre-Islamic kāhin, a religious functionary about whom we know very little (Wellhausen, Reste). The kāhin was a man with occult powers that he exercised as a profession and for which he received a remuneration. He gave his utterances in a particular rhythmic form known as saj`consisting in a sequence of short pregnant sentences, usually with a single rhyme (see rhymed prose).
All speech-act that had its origin in the unseen powers, all speech-act that was not a daily mundane use of words, but had something to do with the unseen powers, ¶ such as cursing (see curse), blessing (q.v.), divination (q.v.), incantation, inspiration and revelation (see revelation and inspiration), had to be couched in this form…. The magical words uttered by a competent soothsayer are often compared in old Arabic literature to deadly arrows shot by night which fly unseen by their victims (Izutsu, God, 183 f.; see magic).
The specimens of kāhin sayings that have been transmitted in early Islamic literature are, however, not always assuredly genuine. In some cases, they even appear to be modeled after qur’ānic verses, such as parts of the Satīḥ-story (Neuwirth, Der historische Muhammad) transmitted by Ibn Isḥāq (d. 150/767; Sīra, i, 10-11) and adduced by Izutsu (God, 174). The literary form of this sparse material has, furthermore, never been studied systematically. It is difficult, therefore, to draw secure conclusions about the relationship between pre-Islamic kāhin speech and stylistic phenomena in the Qur’ān. Yet, the identification that is found in traditional literature (Ṭabarī, Ta’rīkh, i, 1933 f.) of certain sections of the qur’ānic text with kāhin speech has been widely accepted in scholarship; this identification has even led to the assumption that some qur’ānic sūras represent the most reliable evidence for kāhin speech itself (Wellhausen, Reste, 135). What can be asserted, however, is the similarity between kāhin speech and the qur’ānic device of rhymed prose, of saj`. Rhymed prose in the strict sense of the word — consisting of clusters of very short and thus syntactically stereotyped speech units, marked by rhymes of a phonetically striking pattern — is characteristic of the early sūras.
But though the old traditional form of supernatural communication is used, it ¶ serves as a vehicle for conveying a new content, no longer for the purpose of releasing the magical power of words, nor as a form in which to couch “prophecy” in the sense of foretelling (q.v.) future events (Izutsu, God, 184).
Saj` is given up completely in the later sūras where the rhyme makes use of a simple -ūn/-īn — scheme to mark the end of rather long and syntactically complex verses. In these verses, the rhyming end-syllable has ceased to be the truly relevant closing device; that function is transferred to a particular syntactic structure, the clausula or rhyming cadenza (see below; see also form and structure of the qur’ān). Saj` style is thus exclusively characteristic of the early sūras, those texts that aroused — and therefore explicitly transmit — the impression in some listeners that they were related to kāhin speech. In the following, the relationship between kāhin speech and the early sūras will be elucidated by focusing on a group of initiatory sections that in western scholarship have been associated with kāhin speech, namely the introductory oaths (q.v.) of a series of early Meccan sūras. These introductory oaths (though never studied in context) have traditionally been considered dark, obscure, enigmatic.
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The “kāhin-model”: Oath clusters, idhā/yawma-clause-clusters, etc.
The introductory oaths that in twenty-one cases initiate a sūra, and in six cases mark the beginning of a new section, are completely devoid of legal connotations (see law and the qur’ān; contracts and alliances; covenant). Several formal characteristics prove their exclusively literary function, the most striking being the multiplicity and diversity of the objects conjured. A second characteristic is their complex formulaic character: they either appear in the form wa-X or lā uqsimu bi-X, ¶ in most cases (eighteen times, all of them early Meccan) continued by further oaths amounting to extended oath clusters. The oaths are usually followed by a statement worded inna A la-B. Though the oaths most frequently refer to inanimate objects and thus do not appeal to a superior power whose revenge has to be feared, they do convey a particularly serious mood since the objects conjured in some cases project a catastrophic situation; in other cases they pose disquieting enigmas to the listeners. The oath clusters in the Qur’ān may be classified as follows (see Neuwirth, Images):
(1) Oath clusters of the type wa-l-fā`ilāt that conjure a catastrophic scenario: q 37:1-3; 51:1-4; 77:1-5; 79:1-5; 100:1-5 (see apocalypse; punishment stories)
(2) Oath clusters alluding to particular sacred localities: q 52:1-6; 90:1-3; 95:1-3 (see profane and sacred; sacred precincts)
(3) Oath clusters calling upon cosmic phenomena and certain time periods of the day or the night: q 85:1-3; 86:1, 11-2; 89:1-4; 91:1-7; 92:1-3; 93:1-2 (see weather; cosmology; day and night; day, times of)
A few representative examples will be discussed.
Oath clusters that do not explicitly name their objects but only refer to them as unknown, frightening and rapidly approaching phenomena (feminine participles of words of motion or sound appear as harbingers of a catastrophe) have been considered to be the most intricate both by traditional exegetes (see exegesis of the qur’ān: classical and medieval) and by modern scholars, e.g. q 100:1-5, 6-11:
Wa-l-`ādiyāti ḍabḥā/fa-l-mūriyāti qadḥā/fa-l-mughīrāti ṣubḥā/fa-atharna bihi naq`ā/fa-wasaṭna bihi jam`ā/inna l-insāna li-rabbihi la-kanūd/wa-innahu `alā dhālika la-¶ shahīd/wa-innahu li-ḥubbi l-khayri la-shadīd/a-fa-lā ya`lamu idhā bu`thira mā fī l-qubūr/wa-ḥuṣṣila mā fī l-ṣudūr/inna rabbahum bihim yawma’idhin la-khabīr
By the panting runners/striking fire in sparks/storming forward in the morning/their track a dust-cloud/that finally appear in the center of a crowd/verily humankind is to its lord (q.v.) ungrateful/verily, he to that is witness/and verily he for the love of good (al-khayr) is violent/does he know? When what is in the graves is ransacked (see burial; death and the dead)/and what is in the breasts is extracted/verily, their lord that day will of them be well informed.
The five oaths depict a kind of canvas or “tableau” of one and the same object viewed in several successive stages of a continuous and rapid motion: a group of horses, whose riders are carrying out a raid, ghazwa ( q 100:3: al-mughīrāt; see expeditions and battles; fighting; war). The progression of their movement ( q 100:1, 5: al-`ādiyāt/fa-wasaṭna), which ends with a sudden standstill at its destination in the camp of the enemy, is stressed by the particle fa-. The movement is directed towards a fixed aim: to overcome the enemy by surprise, perhaps even while still asleep ( q 100:3: ṣubḥan).
On closer examination the tableau depicted in the oath cluster appears incomplete, its immanent tension unresolved. The description is interrupted at the very point where the attack on the enemy camp would be expected to start. Instead, a general statement about human ingratitude to God (see gratitude and ingratitude), their obstinacy (see insolence and obstinacy) and greediness (see avarice) is made — a focus on two vehement human psychic movements that may be taken to echo the violent movements of the horses (see violence). The statement leads up to a rhetorical question about human knowl-¶ edge of their eschatological fate ( q 100:9 f.; see eschatology) which again extends into a description of the psychic situation of humanity on that day (see last judgment; resurrection). At this point the imagery of the interrupted panel of the ghazwa is continued: the eschatological scenery (structured in a likewise ecstatically accelerating form of an idhā-clause cluster: q 100:9 f.: idhā bu`thira mā fī l-qubūri/wa-ḥuṣṣila mā fī l-ṣudūri ) presents a picture that precisely presupposes a violent attack leading to the overturn of everything, since it portrays devastation: the awakening and dispersal (bu`thira b-q-y, 425a ) of the sleepers (mā fī l-qubūri), the emptying of the most concealed receptacles ( q 100:10: mā fī l-ṣudūri). The attack presupposed here has already been presumed prototypically by the panel of the ghazwa-riders portrayed in the oath cluster. The threatening scenario of the introductory sections, whose effect is enhanced through the equally frightening associations conjured by the kāhin speech style, thus relies on a deeper subtext: the panel of Bedouin (q.v.) attackers taking the enemy by surprise after a rapid and violent ride — perhaps the fear-inducing scenario par excellence in the pre-Islamic context — reveals itself as an image of the last day (see symbolic imagery). It serves as a prototype, easily understandable for the listeners as it derives from genuine social experience, for the as yet not-experienced incidents leading up to the last judgment.
The oath cluster in q 77:1-6, though usually interpreted as a reference to angels in their various activities (see angel), refers “to the winds bringing up the storm-clouds which give the picture of approaching doom” (Bell, Qur’ān, ii, 626; see air and wind). Once more we are confronted with a tableau of violently moving beings — from the time of their earlier use in q 100 feminine plural participles in qur’ānic speech have a catastrophic connotation — that prototypically ¶ anticipate the eschatological events to be expected. Although the eschatological topic itself is not raised until the end of the sūra, the matrix of images created by the oath cluster remains continuously effective. The refrain repeated ten times throughout the text: “woe that day to those who count false!” (see cheating; weights and measures; measurement) serves to make audible something of the recitation, the reminder ( dhikr; see remembrance), meant to be a warning, which was part of the appearance of the enigmatic beings projected in the oath cluster ( q 77:5: fa-l-mulqiyāti dhikrā). This type of oath cluster soon goes through a change. In the somewhat later text q 51:1-4, again presenting a panel of clouds that signal a rainstorm, the structural function of the introductory oath clusters has changed. Though it still introduces a prototypical tableau of imminent eschatological incidents, the sense of an “enigma” that had marked the early cases, has now disappeared, and the anticipation of the explicit mention of eschatological phenomena is immediately dissipated. By this stage, the listener is sufficiently accustomed to the prototypical representation of the last day that he or she can immediately translate.
A further step towards the demystification of enigmatic speech is achieved in q 37:1-5, a sūra of the second Meccan period where an oath cluster of the type wa-l-fā`ilāt appears for the last time. Here, the objects conjured no longer belong to the empirical sphere of human experience but to the realm of celestial beings, angels. On the formal side there is a change, too: The usual semantic caesura between the oath formulae and the ensuing statement has vanished, and both textual units display a strong conceptual coherence: the oath cluster involving angels singing hymns ( q 37:3: fa-l-tāliyāti dhikrā) is continued by a ¶ statement that itself presents the text of that angelical recitation ( q 37:4: inna ilāhakum la-wāḥidun ). With this last wa-l-fā`ilāt-cluster, the earlier function of the oath clusters, i.e. to depict a prototypical panel of the eschatological events, has ceased to operate.
The second and third kinds of oath clusters are less enigmatically coded: they are phrased either wa-l-X or lā uqsimu bi-X. A group of these clusters alludes to sacred localities. An early example is q 95:1-3:
wa-l-tīni wa-l-zaytūn/wa-ṭūri sīnīn/wa-hādhā l-baladi l-amīn/la-qad khalaqnā l-insāna fī aḥsani taqwīm/thumma radadnāhu asfala sāfilīn/illā lladhīna āmanū wa-`amilū l-ṣāliḥāti fa-hum ajrun ghayru mamnūn/fa-mā yukadhdhibuka ba`du bi-l-dīn/a-laysa llāhu bi-aḥkami l-ḥākimīn
By the fig and the olive/by Mount Sinai/and this land secure/surely, we have created man most beautifully erect/then have rendered him the lowest of the low/except those who have believed and wrought the works of righteousness for them is a reward rightfully theirs/what then, after that will make you declare false in regard to the judgment?/is not God the best of judges?