Applied Rhetorical Mechanisms in the Commentaries on al-Mutanabbī's Dīwān : A Comparative Analytical Study of the Eastern ( Mashriqī ) and Andalusian ( Andalusī ) Schools

Abstract

This study examines the mechanisms of applied rhetoric employed by the classical commentators of Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī's Dīwān in analyzing syntactic arrangement (naẓm), rhetorical imagery, figurative language (majāz), and embellishment (badīʿ). The corpus comprises seven of the most prominent classical commentaries: al-Muwaḍḍiḥ by al-Khaṭīb al-Tibrīzī; the commentary known as Muʿjiz Aḥmad; al-Fasr by Ibn Jinnī; Sharḥ al-Mushkil min Shiʿr al-Mutanabbī by Ibn Sīdah; the commentary of al-Wāḥidī; the commentary of Ibn al-Aflīlī (as transmitted by al-Ṣiqillī al-Maghribī in al-Takmila); and al-Ṣiqillī al-Maghribī's own analyses in the same work. The study proceeds from the hypothesis that, despite their chronological distance and methodological diversity, these commentaries converge on a set of procedural mechanisms for engaging with syntax, imagery, figurative language, and embellishment, while diverging in methodological explicitness and in the degree of elaboration or conciseness in their justifications. Adopting a descriptive-analytical comparative method, the study addresses three procedural questions for each mechanism: how does the commentator uncover the rhetorical phenomenon; by what criteria is its quality or deficiency judged; and where do the methods of the Eastern (Mashriqī) and Andalusian (Andalusī) schools converge or diverge? The study finds that the four Eastern commentators (al-Tibrīzī, Muʿjiz Aḥmad, Ibn Jinnī, and al-Wāḥidī) largely converge on a single interpretation of shared textual cruxes to the point that their wording appears mutually derivative, whereas the Andalusian and Maghribī commentators (Ibn Sīdah, Ibn al-Aflīlī, and al-Ṣiqillī al-Maghribī) tend toward greater independence in selecting evidence and toward marked concision in stating ellipsis, with Ibn Sīdah distinguished by argumentative depth and al-Ṣiqillī al-Maghribī by explicit aesthetic evaluative judgments .