The Rhetorical Schools of the Islamic East and Their Role in Shaping the Methodologies of the Commentaries on the Dīwān of Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī: The Historical and Methodological Context and Its Applications in Ibn Jinnī, al-Wāḥidī, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, and al-Tabrīzī

Abstract

This study examines the historical and methodological context in which the Eastern (Mashriqī) commentaries on the Dīwān of Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī emerged, tracing their civilizational and scholarly roots in the schools of Basra, Baghdad, and Syria (al-Shām), in order to uncover the direct and indirect influence of these schools on the methodologies of the commentators. The study draws on an analytical reading of four of the most prominent Eastern commentaries: Ibn Jinnī's al-Fasr, al-Wāḥidī's commentary, Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī's Muʿjiz Aḥmad, and al-Khaṭīb al-Tabrīzī's commentary, together with an account of the criteria for selecting these four works and the reasons for excluding other Eastern commentaries such as those of al-ʿUkbarī, Ibn Fūrjah, and al-Yāziji's gloss. The study is organized into three sections: the first addresses the rhetorical schools of the East (Basra, Baghdad, and al-Shām) and their influence on the commentaries on al-Mutanabbī; the second surveys the four selected commentaries, their methods, and the criteria for their selection; and the third analyzes the concept of applied rhetoric among these commentators through three central issues-majāz (figurative language), naẓm (compositional order), and inzīyāḥ (deviation)-drawing on direct poetic evidence from al-Mutanabbī's Dīwān. The study finds that the Eastern commentators, although they did not possess the modern term inzīyāḥ and had not yet arrived at al-Jurjānī's complete theory of naẓm, were nonetheless practicing a living applied rhetorical awareness as they analyzed al-Mutanabbī's poetry verse by verse-treating majāz as a tool of semantic extension, naẓm as a compositional coherence reflecting semantic coherence, and departure from convention as a site of critical contention oscillating between admiration and censure-revealing that applied Arabic rhetoric had matured in practice before its comprehensive theoretical formulation .