Reference appendix
Rhetorical glossary
Plain-language explanations of terminology from Qurʾānic studies, Arabic, hadith, law, worship, and scholarly history.
Arabic rhetorical devices and their meanings.
Grammar, law, hadith and other technical terms
Further discussion
ḥadhf الحَذْف, leaving a word out
Definition. Something the sentence needs is not said. Mention is the ordinary case in Arabic, and al-Maydānī puts the reason plainly: naming a thing is the sign that the speaker means to inform you of it, and leaving it out is the sign that he does not.
الأصل ... أنْ يُذْكر ولا يُحْذَفَ، لأنَّ ذِكْره دليلٌ على إرادة الإِعْلامِ به، أمّا حَذْفُه فهو دليلٌ على عدم الإِعْلامِ به
An omission is therefore never merely economy; it is a decision about what the hearer is being asked to attend to. al-Maydānī lists the motives that call for one, and the eighth is the case met most often in the Qurʾān: what is left out is already fixed and beyond doubt, so that naming it would be excess. This is the kind called الحَذْف لِلْعِلْم بِالمَحْذُوف, omission because the omitted thing is known.
كَوْنُ ما يُحْذَفُ مُتَعَيِّناً حقيقةً أو ادّعاءً، فلا داعي إلى ذكره
Source. al-Maydānī, al-Balāgha al-ʿArabiyya, 1/312 and 1/338.
Definition. A phrase added so that the hearer cannot take the sentence wrongly. At 4:12 it is the bequest named before the debt.
Further discussion
Definition. The sentence turns from one grammatical person to another, as in the reading نُدْخِلْهُ, "We will admit him", after Allah has been named in the third person at 4:13 and 4:14. Al-Rāzī compares it with بَلِ اللَّهُ مَوْلاكُمْ followed by سَنُلْقِي at 3:150 to 151, and Abū Ḥayyān identifies the same change.
Definition. The demonstrative for what is far, أُولَئِكَ, "those", used for people who have just been described. At 4:17 the distance may mark the height of the penitents' rank, or only that their description is complete (Ibn ʿUthaymīn, al-Ālūsī, at 4:17–18).
Definition. A question that asks for no information. It rejects the act and rebukes whoever would do it, as the hamza of أَتَأْخُذُونَهُ does at 4:20, after the ban has already been given.
Further discussion
Definition. A sentence is begun fresh instead of being tied to the sentence before it by a connecting word. Nothing joins it grammatically, so it makes its own statement rather than adding a clause to someone else's. The rhetoricians treat the choice between joining and separating as a real one: a separated sentence stands on its own authority, and the relation it has to what precedes it is left to the sense rather than marked in the grammar. The ابتدائي kind is a separation that opens a subject rather than answering a question raised by the previous sentence.
Further discussion
Definition. A word is lifted out of the field it was coined for and used in another field, because the two are alike in some respect. The likeness is not stated; the borrowed word is simply put in place of the word that was expected, and the hearer supplies the connection. It is treated by the rhetoricians as a kind of comparison with one of its two sides left out.
Further discussion
Definition. The wording runs longer than the bare meaning needs, and the extra length is doing work: fixing something in the mind, closing off an ambiguity, or tying two statements together. It is the opposite of الإيجاز, compression. Length without work is not iṭnāb but padding, and the rhetoricians keep the two apart.
Definition. A name is repeated where a pronoun would have done. At 4:14 Allah and His Messenger are named again after the condition of 4:13; Abū al-Suʿūd gives its purpose as للمبالغة في الزجر بتهويل الأمرِ وتربيةِ المهابة, "to intensify the deterrent by magnifying the matter and instilling awe".
Further discussion
Definition. Two words set close together resemble each other in their letters while differing in form or in sense. In the مغاير kind the two are not identical in shape: they may differ in the form of the verb, in vowelling, or in one letter. The ear hears the echo and the mind registers that the sense has moved.
Further discussion
Definition. A word is used in the ordinary sense it was coined for, and used in order to point at a second meaning that always comes with the first. The speaker does not name the thing he means. He names something the hearer cannot have without it, and lets the hearer complete the step.
هي اللّفظ المستعمل فيما وضِع له في اصطلاح التخاطب للدّلالة به على معنىً آخر لازمٍ له
Source. al-Maydānī, al-Balāgha al-ʿArabiyya, 2/127.
Definition. A figure whose ground is what the thing will become, or the relation of cause and effect. At 4:10 the property the guardians eat is given the name of the Fire it brings them to (Ibn ʿĀshūr). At 4:9 he names the same relation الأَوْل, the outcome, in which a thing is named by what it will come to.
Definition. An act is ascribed to something that does not itself perform it. At 4:15 the taking belongs to Allah or His angels and is ascribed to death (al-Durra, al-Zuḥaylī, al-Ṣābūnī).
Definition. Saying a thing for stress. At 4:18 those who die as disbelievers are named beside those who repent only when death comes, so that a repentance made when death is present is counted as no repentance (al-Bayḍāwī, Ibn Kamāl Pāshā, at 4:17–18); at 4:20 the qinṭār names the largest sum.
Further discussion
Definition. A group of things is set against a matching group, and the second group answers the first in order, member for member. It differs from الطباق in the count: a ṭibāq sets one thing against its opposite, while a muqābala holds more than one element on each side and keeps them in step.
Source. al-Maydānī, al-Balāgha al-ʿArabiyya, vol. 2, the chapter on الطباق and المقابلة. Page number not available.
Definition. The middle relation between leaving words understood for brevity and expanding a meaning with added detail: the wording expresses the intended meaning without either. Al-Maydānī tentatively gives the promise of 4:13 as an example.
Definition. The end of a passage answers its beginning with the same word, as at 4:12.
Definition. The سَ prefixed to a present verb to mark it future. At 4:10 يَأْكُلُونَ, "they eat", stands without it and وَسَيَصْلَوْنَ, "and they will be burned", takes it, and Abū Ḥayyān explains the difference by the two accounts of the fire.
Further discussion
Definition. A sentence is set at the end of a passage which restates in general terms what the passage has just said in particular terms. Its reach is the whole of what came before it and not the last item only, and it is meant to settle the matter rather than to add to it.
Definition. A statement given first in summary and then in detail, as the charge of 4:11 is, with the بَدَل, the substitute that takes the whole apart.
Further discussion
taghlīb التَّغْلِيب, predominance
Definition. The name or form of one part covers the whole. Arabic can use a masculine form for a group or pair that includes both sexes, as at 4:15–16, and the form occurs frequently in the Qurʾān; at 4:18 the name of one part covers the disbelievers and the sinners together.
Definition. Ibn ʿĀshūr takes the eating of fire at 4:10 as تَخْيِيل and تَرْشِيح, imagery and strengthening, for the borrowing of "eat" for "take".
Definition. Repetition, and the lengthening of a sentence beyond what the bare sense needs, for emphasis. At 4:12 a clause is said four times, and at 4:20 the word "wife" is repeated.
Further discussion
Definition. A state of affairs is put before the hearer as a picture with parts in it, rather than reported as a fact. What is drawn need not have happened; the point is the shape of the situation, and the wording is chosen to make that shape visible.
Further discussion
Definition. An indefinite noun in the accusative removes a vagueness in the sentence before it by saying in what respect the statement holds. The working test is that مِنْ, "in respect of," can be supplied in front of it without spoiling the sense. This is a term of grammar that the rhetoricians use.
Further discussion
Definition. A noun is left without the article, and the bare form is understood as marking out a sort of the thing rather than the whole of it. Two readings are always available and the context decides between them, or leaves both: a kind of the thing, meaning this sort and not that sort, or a portion of it, meaning some and not all.
Definition. A noun is left indefinite to magnify it. At 4:10 نَارًا and سَعِيرًا stand without the article (al-Naysābūrī), a fire among fires, left unspecified, whose full intensity none knows but Allah (al-Rāzī).
Further discussion
Definition. A word is moved in front of the position the ordinary order of Arabic would give it. The move marks the word brought forward as the thing that matters, and it makes the hearer wait for the word that has been pushed back.
Further discussion
Definition. Something is added which changes nothing in the bare sense and strengthens the claim. It takes more than one shape. A word or a letter may be added, and the باء before a subject is one of the standing cases: it does no work as a preposition, and its presence is what marks the emphasis. Or a statement already made may be said again in other words, so that the second saying settles what the first left open. In that form it is the work an apposition does when the restatement adds no new thing and only makes the first statement unmistakable.
Definition. A question that rejects an act and wonders at it, so declaring the act enormous. وَكَيْفَ تَأْخُذُونَهُ, "and how could you take it", at 4:21, asks how such a thing could be done (Ibn ʿUthaymīn, al-Durra), a rejection after a rejection with wonder added (al-Hilāl).
Definition. A warning understood from the words without being stated. At 4:9 it is that the guardians' own children's lot will be what they did to the children of others, and Darwīsh names the same device at 4:10.
Further discussion
Definition. Two opposites are brought together in one passage. One thing is set against the one thing that contradicts it, and naming both ends closes the field so that nothing is left outside the two.
Source. al-Maydānī, al-Balāgha al-ʿArabiyya, vol. 2, the chapter on الطباق and المقابلة. Page number not available.
Further discussion
ʿahd and jins العَهْد والجِنْس, the two readings of the definite article
Definition. The article أل on a noun is read in one of two ways. Read as العهد, the article of prior acquaintance, it points at a particular one already known to speaker and hearer, usually because it has been mentioned before. Read as الجنس, the article of kind, it points at the whole sort and takes in every member of it. Which reading is meant is settled by the context, and a passage will often have both with one preferred. This is a term of grammar that the rhetoricians use.