Patterns of the Nominal Declarative Sentence in the Orations of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz: A Grammatical Study

Abstract

I praise Allah the Almighty for granting us the opportunity to examine the legacy of the pious from the Ummah of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). Imam Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz was one of the Umayyad caliphs and is described as the fifth of the Rashidun Caliphs. I have studied a portion of his orations under the title, "Patterns of the Nominal Declarative Sentence in the Orations of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz: A Grammatical Study." The introduction provides a brief biography of Ibn Abd al-Aziz and defines the study’s terminology, including the definition of oratory and its various domains within his leadership. The chapters analyze the "patterns of the nominal declarative sentence" from several perspectives: first, the impact of operative particles (naskh); second, affirmative structures (as the default state) alongside the inclusion of negative particles; and third, the presence or absence of emphasis. The second chapter presents practical applications by analyzing selected orations of Ibn Abd al-Aziz to illustrate these nominal declarative sentence patterns. The study concludes with several findings, most notably the absence of explicit verbal and nominal emphasis in the orations available to us. I suggest that he may have employed such emphasis in other speeches, or perhaps he did not use it at all due to his lack of affectation or his profound lack of trust in worldly matters, as Ibn Abd al-Aziz held no value for what this world contains.