A Structural Study of informal letters in Abbasid Era

دراسة بِنْيويَة للرَّسائل الإخْوانِيَّة في العصر العبَّاسي

Abstract

Informal letters being written between individuals are considered as an important part of human creative literature. In the informal letters, people usually use a straightforward way to speak their hearts and mind. That is why, they stand a unique position in the human creative literature. We know that the age of Abbasid period was a golden age, not only in terms of its scientific and empirical progress, but in terms of eloquence of Arabic language, too, both in prose and poetry; and it has enjoyed the intense scholarly studies over the centuries. But we notice that an area of Abbasid literature is not fully explored, that is, the informal letters, written by the writers, ministers, and caliphs for their personal reasons, not related to the formal matters. The reason for selecting these Al-Ekhwania epistles (the informal letters) is the availability of prosaic and poetic texts, which were written in the period covered by the intended study. It has its own literary merits, as well as, historical importance. These letters need to be studied with different aspects and angles to draw important conclusions for the sake of Arabic literature. This article has been divided to a preface, funoon bayaniah (tashbeeh,istiaarah and kinayah) and conclusions.