المدح في براعة الاستهلال نظماً ونثراً في خزانة الأدب وغاية الأرب للحموي ) دراسة وصفية تحليلية(

An Analyticle & descriptive study of Praise of Excellent beginning: Poetry and Prose in Khizānat al-Adab of Al-Ḥamawī

Abstract

Arabic Rhetoric consists of three important sciences namely; a. ‘Ilm al-Ma‘ānī (word order) connected to semantic syntax. b. ‘Ilm al-Bayān (science of speech), which discusses allegorical and non-allegorical significations, linguistic allusion and linguistic signaling. c. ‘Ilm Al- Badī‘: (Embellishments), which is sub divided into: Al Muhāsanāt Al- Lafziyyah (Lexical Embellishments), Al Muhāsanāt Al-Ma‘nawīyyah (semantical Embellishments).

Among the most important topics of Lexical Embellishments is baraāt al-istilāl (Excellent Beginning) براعة الاستهلالwhich is related to text of literature both poetry & prose. Excellent beginning means to outline the theme it tackles in the beginning like in the first stanza of a poem or in the beginning of preface of speech etc. Some rhetoric’s scholars cited this topic with examples in their books, one of them is Ibn Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī, Abū Bakr ibn ‘Alī (died: 837AH). His famouse book is Khizānat al-Adab wa-ghāyat Al-Arab. In this book, he cited many topics of ‘Ilm al-Badī ‘(Embellishments), and particularly the Baraāt al-istilāl (excellent beginning براعة الاستهلال along with examples from poetry of different poets and prose of several types.

The researchers tried their best to collect some relevent examples of this topic to prove that Al-Ḥamawī has focused on this aspect correctly and the Arabic rhetoric scholars quoted the excellent beginning in their text both in the form of prose and poetry.

Keywords: Arabic Rhetoric, Sciences of Rhetoric, Lexical Embellishments, Excellent beginning, Al-Ḥamawī, Khizānat Al-adab.