The First Matter
History teaches us regretfully that when, attracted by the Arabs’ rule the non‑Arabs intermingled with them, the non-Arabs both confused Qur’anic eloquence, known as the natural speech of the Mudarī, and, although novices, when they adopted the art of Arabic rhetoric, they changed rhetorical taste from composition following the meanings, which is the natural course of ideas and essence of eloquence, into composition based on the words themselves. As follows:
The natural channel for ideas and emotions is the ordering of the meanings expressed. The arrangement of the meanings is constructed firmly through the rules of logic. Logic progresses step by step towards truths. And thought reaches truths when it penetrates the subtleties of the natures of things (mâhiyat). The subtleties of the essences of things are derived from and reinforce the world’s perfect order. Within the perfect order resides sheer beauty, the source of all beauty. And sheer beauty is the garden of the elegant and refined sayings that are the flowers of eloquence. This flower‑filled garden is where the nightingales wander who are known as the poets and lovers of blooms. And what imparts to the sweet, soft songs of those nightingales their spiritual harmony is the meanings’ arrangement.
But while this was the case, the non‑Arab newcomers, spongers, and novices tried to enter the ranks of the literary masters of Arabic rhetoric, and the matter went off the rails. For a nation’s temperament is the source of its emotions and its language reflects those emotions. Just as the temperaments of nations differ, so does the rhetorical capacity of their languages differ, especially a grammatical language like Arabic.
It was due to this that because they turned from the ordering of the meanings, the natural channel of ideas, to the ordering of the words, which is much too deficient, dry, and infertile to be the channel for the flow of ideas and garden for the flowers of eloquence, they threw rhetoric into disorder.
For the newcomers, due to ill choice or driven by need, and because they had need to learn the words’ literal meanings and their positioning and enhancement, and because since the words are channels, they are easier, clearer, and more familiar to the superficial view, and more suitable for popular display and drawing the people’s attention, the newcomers expended all their efforts on the words. That is to say, however much they progressed, they kept their minds from becoming immersed in the ordering of the meanings before them, which may reveal dazzling vistas, and wandered around chasing the words.
After imagining the meanings, their ideas bifurcated on pursuing the words. Using mere words, these by degrees came to predominate over the meanings, and since the natural function of words, serving the meanings, was reversed, a vast distance opened up between true eloquence and the art of those word‑worshipping braggarts, or rather, their artificiality.
If you wish, consider a literary genius like al‑Ḥarīrī; take a look at his Maqāmāt: he was defeated by his passion for words and this stained his fine writing. So too he was imitated by the word‑worshippers and was responsible for subsequent developments. So to cure the illness, the renowned ‘Abd al-Qāhir filled a third of his Dalā’il al‑I‘jāz and Asrār al‑Balāgha with his remedies. Yes, the passion for words is an illness, but it is not known as such.
Note Just as the passion for words is an illness, so too through its excesses the passion for literary forms, styles, similes, imaginings, and rhyme becomes an illness, each type of which sacrifices the meaning for itself. For some witty point even, or for the sake of the rhyme, many literary figures immediately offend against propriety.
Writing should be embellished, but on condition it is natural to its meaning; and the form expressing the meaning should be made imposing, but on condition permission is sought from the meaning; and the style should be made brilliant, but on condition the relationship with its purpose is taken into consideration and it consents to it; and the imagination should be allowed to roam and to sparkle, but on condition it is not detrimental to reality and is not burdensome, and is a simile for reality and seeks assistance from reality.