The Emergence of #Ilm al-Bayān: Classical Arabic Literary Theory in the Arabic East in the 7th/13th Century The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Noy, Avigail. 2016. The Emergence of #Ilm al-Bayān: Classical Arabic Literary Theory in the Arabic East in the 7th/13th Century. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33840723 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Emergence of ʿIlm al-Bayān: Classical Arabic Literary Theory in the Arabic East in the 7th/13th Century A dissertation presented by Avigail Noy to The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts August 2016 © 2016 Avigail Noy All rights reserved. Advisor: Professor Andras P. Hamori Avigail Noy The Emergence of ʿIlm al-Bayān: Classical Arabic Literary Theory in the Arabic East in the 7th/13th Century Abstract This dissertation identifies a turning point in the development of literary theory as a discipline in the classical Arabic-Islamic world, starting in the Arabic East in the thirteenth century under the emerging framework of ʿilm al-bayān ‘the science of good style’. Treating a range of poetic, rhetorical, and literary-critical matters that had been studied under various disciplinary headings since the ninth century, the discipline was now consciously recognized as having an underlying theory and an established canon. I trace this development beginning with D iyāʾ al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr (d. 1239) and follow its progression throughout Greater Syria and Egypt as late as the end of the fourteenth century, after the standard theory of rhetoric (ʿilm al- balāgha) emerged within the madrasa institution. I then analyze in depth one test case for literary-theoretical thinking in this time and place, namely, majāz ‘figurative language’. Although linguistic theories about majāz, inspired by Islamic legal theory, had become a hallmark of literary studies, I argue that literary scholars implicitly espoused a non-linguistic conception of the notion, akin to kadhib ‘lie’ (a term not used due to its negative theological connotations). My analysis demonstrates that despite tensions between being a science concerned with hermeneutics and one concerned with poetics, ʿilm al-bayān was essentially the latter. iii Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................vi Introduction ................................................................................................................................1 PART ONE: The Emergence of ʿIlm al-Bayān Introduction ..................................................................................................................................20 Chapter 1: ʿIlm al-Bayān -Dī Ib -A īr .......................................24 1.1. bi-manzilat uṣūl al-fiqh: The Discipline is Scientific ...............................................24 1.2. al-aʾimma al-mashhūrīna fīhi: The Discipline has a Canon .....................................40 Summing Up ....................................................................................................................55 Chapter 2: Evidence of ʿIlm al-Bayān in Later Sources .........................................................57 2.1. The Standard Theory.................................................................................................58 2.2. ʿIlm al-Bayān in Works on the Classification of the Sciences .................................62 2.3. ʿIlm al-Bayān in Literary-Theoretical Works ...........................................................75 Summing Up ....................................................................................................................92 Chapter 3: Bayān and ʿIlm al-Bayān r r -Dī ...................................................94 3.1. The Term Bayān .......................................................................................................95 The Legal-Hermeneutic sense(s) of Bayān ..........................................................99 The Philosophical Sense(s) of Bayān ..................................................................105 The Philological Sense(s) of Bayān .....................................................................121 The Scribal Sense of Bayān .................................................................................132 3.2. The Phrase ʿIlm al-Bayān .........................................................................................135 Summing Up ....................................................................................................................145 PART TWO: ʿIlm al-Bayān in the Seventh/Thirteenth Century Introduction ..................................................................................................................................147 Chapter 4: The Critical Landscape ..........................................................................................149 .1. iyāʾ al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr (d. 637/1239), al-Mathal, al-Jāmiʿ and More .................149 Scholarly Works...................................................................................................156 Unacknowledged Engagement with ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī .............................164 4.2. Ibn al-Zamlakānī (d. 651/1253), al-Tibyān, al-Burhān and al-Mujīd ......................172 4.3. Zayn al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. after 693/129 ), Rawḍat al-faṣāḥa .....................................179 4.4. Ibn al-Naqīb (d. 698/1298), Introduction to Tafsīr ...................................................187 .5. Najm al-Dīn al- fī (d. 716/1316), al-Iksīr fī ʿilm al-tafsīr .....................................192 Chapter 5: Majāz in Literary Theory Revisited ......................................................................203 Preliminaries ....................................................................................................................203 Majāz of the Lexicographers ...............................................................................207 Conceptual Metaphors .........................................................................................210 iv Dead Metaphors ...................................................................................................212 Metonymies..........................................................................................................214 Idiomatic Sayings.................................................................................................215 Literary Theory: From Ibn Rashīq and al-Jurjānī to Ibn Abī al-Iṣbaʿ .................216 Majāz as Kadhib ..................................................................................................223 5.1. An Alternative Theory of Majāz iyāʾ al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr ....................................228 The Legal Underpinnings of Majāz .....................................................................229 Philological Underpinnings of Majāz ..................................................................238 Engagement with al-Jurjānī’s Asrār al-balāgha and Philosophical Poetics ........240 The Discourse of Kadhib .....................................................................................243 Further Engagement with al-Jurjānī Differentiating Tashbīh from Istiʿāra .......246 Further Engagement with al-Jurjānī Analogy .....................................................249 Majāz in the Mathal: A New Classification ........................................................265 Tawassuʿ (and the Influence of Ibn Sīnā) ............................................................269 Istiʿāra and Kināya ..............................................................................................283 Why is Tashbīh Majāz? .......................................................................................297 Summing Up ........................................................................................................305 5.2. A Unique Commentary on al-Jurjānī Ibn al-Zamlakānī ..........................................307 Kināya ..................................................................................................................312 Istiʿāra as Majāz Isnādī .......................................................................................318 A Departure from al-Jurjānī’s Majāz fī l-Ithbāt ...................................................325 5.3. Persian Poetics in the Arabic East: Zayn al-Dīn al-Rāzī ..........................................329 Marginalizing Majāz ............................................................................................331 Comparison in the Form of Iḍāfa.........................................................................334 Positing a Literal Substrate ..................................................................................337 Toward a Unifying