Cover image for Chapter 6 A Preliminary Catalogue of Qur'anic Sajʻ Techniques : Beat Patterning, Parallelism, and Rhyme
Chapter 6 A Preliminary Catalogue of Qur'anic Sajʻ Techniques : Beat Patterning, Parallelism, and Rhyme
Title:
Chapter 6 A Preliminary Catalogue of Qur'anic Sajʻ Techniques : Beat Patterning, Parallelism, and Rhyme
Author:
Klar, Marianna
ISBN:
9780367800055
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
Taylor & Francis 2020
Physical Description:
1 electronic resource (52 p.)
Abstract:
This essay proposes a preliminary catalogue of fifteen suggested sajʻ structures, with representative Qur'anic examples. The basic rules that govern Qur'anic sajʻ have already been carefully elucidated by Devin Stewart in a series of articles on this subject. Stewart has also provided some exploratory illustrations of where individual sajʻahs might combine to form consecutive strings of sajʻ units. Yet the statement of the medieval rhetorician Ḍiyāʼ al-Dīn ibn al-Athīr (d. 637/1239) that it is only the occasional need for "brevity" (ījāz) and "concision" (ikhtiṣār) that precluded the Qur'an from having been written entirely in sajʻ suggests that, at some point, many more of the Qur'an's rhetorical features must have been seen as having being informed by the rules and the rhythms of sajʻ than the current perception of Qur'anic sajʻ in the Western Academy might lead one to imagine.  The idea that Qur'anic sajʻ might in fact operate within a deliberate give and take of sajʻ's three distinct parameters-end rhyme, accentual beat patterning, and grammatical parallelism-proved to be a fruitful one in categorizing a number of the passages highlighted by Ibn al-Athīr as illustrative of the phenomenon of sajʻ in the Qur'an. Using this methodology it was possible to create a number of strings of consecutive sajʻahs that would otherwise have fallen outside of the parameters of sajʻ as it is currently understood.
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