Arabic Literature

Abstract The manuscripts are the written heritages and possessions of our predecessors and their maintenance and retention is of great importance. The “Zobdat al-E’rab” manuscript, which is written by “AbdAllah-Ibn-Muhammad”, is a book including Morphological and syntactical topics, which in particular deals with the grammatical analysis and brief description of the “Ezhar al-Asrar Fi al-Nahv” that is written by “Muhammad-Ibn-PirAli-Ibn-Eskandar Berkavy”. Besides the technical, educational and scientific worthiness and importance, this book worths noting, correction and criticism since it is the first grammatical analysis of the “Ezhar al-Asrar” book. It should be emphasized that the “Ezhar Al-asrar” book is among the important and significant morphological scientific and educational books which is taught in most of the religious schools of Turkey. Four copies of the “Zobdat-al-E’rab” have been found in the libraries all over the world, which one of them preserves in the library of the Islamic Parliament of Iran. Other copies of this valuable book exist in big libraries in the world such as the French National library and library of the “King Faisal” university. Using a descriptive, analytical approach, this paper provides biographies of the authors of the “Ezhar al-Asrar” and the “Zobdat al-E’rab ” books and introduces the “Zobdat al-E’rab” manuscript completely. Also, the excellences, shortcomings and technical issues of the manuscript have been presented which are obtained during the collation, investigation, and correction. The exact writing dates for two copies of this manuscript are unknown to us. Also the writing dates of the two other copies are much later than the writing date of the original copy. As a result, determination of the first and the original copy seems to be difficult. One of the important results which is obtained and reported by this paper is the best way which can be used in order to correct this manuscript.  

Abstract The subject of this article is the image of art between old and new rhetoric and, in particular, metaphor according to Jaber Asfour’s view. The artistic expression of nature and characteristics and the course of its evolution and its fundamental study through its relationship with other sciences and the role that these sciences have in the realization of this concept is the most important project that Jaber Asfour brought in some of his compilations, including “artistic image in Arabic Criticism and rhetoric” which is one of the deepest studies in this field. In this research we discover the hidden dimensions of artistic imagery in Jaber Asfour’s view based on metaphor. In order to achieve this goal, we refer to Jaber Asfoor’s book as the main source and then refer to other relevant books, such as Secrets of Al-Balaghah and Alla'il al-Ajaz, to criticize and analyze it. The results show that Jaber Asfour’s view on metaphor is a comprehensive view. According to the discourses of formation of artistic forms, Jaber has provided a profound study of them and concluded that the old critics did not focus on the emotional aspects of objects or the emotional content of words, but maintained the rational reconciliation of their constituent elements. In other words, their way of thinking about similitude was based on rational and verbal terms. So, Jaber Asfour concludes that such a vision has led to a distortion in the concept of poetry, and rhetorically avoids explaining the great abilities of analogies and metaphors. He believes that Abd al-Qahir did not pay attention to personifications for religious tendencies. In our research, we have mentioned examples of rhetorical theory that undermine this claim, or at least makes us to look at it with doubt and certainty.

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