“RHETORIC” IN ARABIC: AL-BALĀGHA OR AL-KHAṬĀBA?

In the dictionaries, two different words are generally given as translations in Arabic for the word rhetoric: al-balāgha and al-khaṭāba. As metarhetorical concepts,

³

these terms are prefixed by

ilm (episteme/scientia) or fann (techne/ars), as in the compounds

ilm al-balāgha and fann al-khaṭāba. (The reverse order, fann al-balāgha/

ilm al-khaṭāba, also occurs.) In most studies explicitly concerned with Arab Islamic rhetoric, al-balāgha tends to be in focus. One can safely say that al-balāgha has received far more scholarly attention than al-khaṭāba. Of those to whom Swartz refers as leading scholars in the field (A. F. Mehren, S. A. Bonebakker, W. Heinrichs, and others), few if any are in effect treating al-khaṭāba at all. Also significant is the fact that the Encyclopaedia of Islam has no entry for al-khaṭāba, while there are extensive entries on al-balāgha and on the classical subdivisions that constitute

ilm al-balāgha.

⁴

According to Heinrichs, “rhetoric” is a term that has to be taken with a grain of salt in the context of Arab Islamic traditions, “but closest to rhetoric is the ‘science of eloquence’ (

ilm al-balāgha).”

⁵

Thus, as convention would have it, the name “Arab Islamic rhetoric” refers primarily to

ilm al-balāgha, a discipline cultivated in scholastic fashion by

Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani (d. 1078), Abu Ya

qub al-Sakkaki (d. 1228), Muhammad ibn

Abd al-Rahman al-Qazwini (d. 1338) and Sa

d al-Din al-Taftazani (d. 1390). Not least important is al-Qazwini, whose Talkhis al-miftah and al-Idah have been used as textbooks up to modern times and also constitute the main reference in August Mehren's Die Rhetorik der Araber as well as in more recent studies by William Smyth and Herbjorn Jenssen.

⁶

In those cases where al-khaṭāba is mentioned at all, it tends to be presented as a foreign discipline, belonging to the tradition of philosophy (falsafa) and of interest primarily to such figures as al-Farabi (Alfarabius, d. 950), Ibn Sina (Avicenna, d. 1036) and Ibn Rushd (Averroës, d. 1198). See, for instance, the following remark in William Smyth's “Rhetoric and

Ilm al-Balagha: Christianity and Islam” (1992):

Roughly the same distinction can be found elsewhere—for instance, in Georges Bohas, Jean-Patrick Guillaume and Djamel E. Kouloughli's The Arabic Linguistic Tradition. According to their terminology, al-khaṭāba is “‘Greek’ rhetoric,” and al-balāgha is “Arabo-Islamic rhetoric,” although the authors admit that there al-khaṭāba also has a non-technical meaning, which is simply “oratory art.”

⁸

The distinction between

ilm al-balāgha and fann al-khaṭāba thus seems to be based on the assumption that while the former constitutes an integral part of the Islamic theological sciences proper (

ulūm al-dīn), the latter belongs to the tradition of philosophy (falsafa) and therefore is not really representative of Islam. Taken together with the fact that the philosophers al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd have often been criticized by shari

a-minded authorities within the Sunni tradition, this may perhaps lead to the conclusion that al-khaṭāba is something foreign to Islam.

It is of course true that al-khaṭāba was commented on by the philosophers. They were commenting on the works of Aristotle in general, not least the part called Organon, of which the book on rhetoric constituted a part.

⁹

The great names of medieval Muslim philosophy all left commentaries on Aristotle's book on rhetoric, which was translated into Arabic at some point during the first centuries of the Islamic era.¹⁰

In this context, we also come across the exotic loan word riṭūrīqā, next to the following elucidation in Arabic: ay al-khaṭāba (i.e., oratory).¹¹

However, two points should be kept in mind when considering these issues. First, the shari

a-minded theologians and preachers, who dismissed philosophy as incompatible with religion, did not give up public oratory just because the philosophers were commenting on Aristotle's book on rhetoric in terms of al-khaṭāba. It should not be overlooked that from the Arabic root kh-ṭ-b, terms and concepts of central importance to the institution of Muslim preaching are derived, such as khuṭba (sermon) and khaṭīb (preacher, orator). Second, it should not simply be taken for granted that al-balāgha, in contrast to al-khaṭāba, would somehow constitute a “native” and completely unique system of “rhetoric” that is peculiar to Muslims and free of foreign influences.

THE SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF

ILM AL-BALĀGHA

Nowadays it is not uncommon to find the term

ilm al-balāgha used as a name for the study of eloquence in general, whether in poetry or in prose, as well as in the written or in the oral modes of expression. In the wider sense,

ilm al-balāgha may thus be understood as belonging to the “literary sciences” (

ulūm al-adab). Often it is also discussed in relation to the notion of “literary criticism” (al-naqd al-adabī). It should not be forgotten, however, that

ilm al-balāgha was originally a science designed to facilitate the exegesis of the Qur

an

¹²

—hence, the long-standing interest in the issue of the so-called i

jāz al-Qur

ān, or “the inimitability of the Qur

an,” or, more precisely, the capacity of the Qur

an to frustrate all human efforts to imitate or surpass the eloquence of God. In this respect

ilm al-balāgha can be referred to as an Islamically motivated kind of rhetoric. But before jumping to conclusions, it may be worth the effort to take a closer look at some of the categories and concepts that are traditionally discussed within the science of al-balāgha.

¹³

On the basis of the influential systematization provided by Muhammad ibn

Abd al-Rahman al-Qazwini (d. 1338), the science has subsequently been classified into the following main parts:

The translations given in parentheses are of course preliminary. My suggestions can be compared with Mehren's: “Begrifflehre” (

ilm al-ma

āni), “Darstellungslehre” (

ilm al-bayān), and “Tropenlehre” or “Verschönerungslehre” (

ilm al-badī

).

¹⁴

The point is that these subdivisions correspond to divisions found in Western systems of rhetoric, as well. The distinction between

ilm al-bayān and

ilm al-badī

, for instance, has its counterpart in the distinction between the art of tropes and the art of figures (schemata). In Western traditions, the latter were in turn subdivided into figures of speech (logos) and figures of expression or thought (dianoia); in Latin terms, figurae verborum and figurae sententiarum, respectively. This also has its equivalent within the tradition of

ilm al-balāgha, where a corresponding division between al-badī

al-lafẓī and al-badī

al-ma

nawī is made. There is no room here to go into detail concerning the catalogue of figures. Suffice it to say that many are easily recognized, as they have counterparts in Western systems of rhetoric: alliteration (jinās), antithesis (ṭibāq), comparation (muqābala), hyperbole (iṭnāb), and so on.

Further, in the

ilm al-ma

ānī-part of

ilm al-balāgha, there is inter alia an interesting dichotomy between informative utterances and performative ones, in terms of khabar (jumla khabariyya) and inshā

(jumla inshā

iyya). The basic point is that, on the one hand, we have those kinds of utterances before which it is appropriate to ask about their truth value and, on the other hand, utterances to which such questions would be inappropriate (i.e., orders, wishes, commandments). The dichotomy may remind the modern student of the so-called Speech Act Theory developed by John L. Austin (1911–60) and John R. Searle (b. 1932). But however suggestive the similarity may be, the dichotomy is already anticipated in the works of Aristotle and more generally in later Hellenistic rhetoric and philosophy.

¹⁵

The following passus in Aristotle's De interpretatione (On Interpretation) will serve as an example:

The dichotomy can be found elsewhere in the Aristotelian corpus and was known in Arabic sources long before the science of al-balāgha was systematized by al-Sakkaki, al-Qazwini, and others. It was familiar to al-Jahiz (d. 869) and Ibn Qutayba (d. 889), as well as to Ibn Wahb (10th century), author of “The Demonstration of the Modes of Expression” (Kitab al-burhan wujuh al-bayan).

¹⁷

Another instance that would suggest a Greek influence on

ilm al-balāgha is the concept of muqtaḍā al-ḥāl (the requirements of the situation),

¹⁸

which quite evidently corresponds to the concept of kairos (circumstance) or aptum in Latin rhetoric. Taken together with other significant concepts such as faṣāḥa (fluency, purity of language), bayān (clearness, eloquence) and badī

(ornamentation), the student familiar with Western rhetoric is reminded of the so-called four virtues of eloquence as expressed in Latin terms: puritas, perspicuitas, ornatus, aptum.

¹⁹

The parallels are there to cast serious doubt on the implicit or explicit claim that al-balāgha (in contrast to al-khaṭāba) would somehow constitute a unique kind of rhetoric peculiar to Islam.

As has been demonstrated by Jenssen, Western students of

ilm al-balāgha have tended to focus on the parts called

ilm al-bayān (the science of metaphors) and

ilm al-badī

(the science of ornaments) while leaving aside the

ilm al-ma

ānī (the science of meanings). This may seem curious in view of the fact that, according to Jenssen, Muslim scholastics considered

ilm al-ma

ānī the most important of the three parts of

ilm al-balāgha.

²⁰

Mehren motivated his exclusion of the

ilm al-ma

ānī-part from his Die Rhetorik der Araber by maintaining that the subjects treated in this part belong to what, from a European perspective, is grammar and logic rather than rhetoric.

²¹

Thus, Mehren confined rhetoric to meaning the study of tropes and figures. Jenssen's observation is important. But there is one further problem—namely, for those interested in “rhetoric” in the sense of public oratory and preaching, it is not enough to have the lacuna of

ilm al-ma

ānī filled. This is the point at which we will have to turn to a discipline that has been even less studied by Western scholars of Arabic rhetoric: the science or art of public speech (

ilm or fann al-khaṭāba).

RHETORIC (FANN AL-KHAṬĀBA) AS A DOXOLOGICAL KNOW-HOW FOR PREACHERS

Though the philosophers were obviously interested in the science of al-khaṭāba, within the context of the Aristotelian Organon, it is important to bear in mind that the art of public speech has been practiced without the need to theorize about it having been felt. Without doubt, the word in Arabic for rhetoric in the sense of public speech is al-khaṭāba rather than al-balāgha. Derived forms, such as khuṭba (sermon/speech), khiṭāb (public discourse), and khaṭīb (preacher/orator), are part of the common vocabulary among Arabic-speaking Muslims. To the philosophers in the medieval Muslim environment, however, this practice of al-khaṭāba was something for the rational mind to reflect on—and, indeed, sometimes to criticize, as well, much in the same way that Plato, and in some instances Aristotle, had criticized the sophists and the poets.

²²

To the more traditionally minded Muslim preacher, on the other hand, al-khaṭāba would instead be an art to be learned and perhaps to reflect on theoretically, as well, but in that case in a manner slightly different from that of the philosophers. The art of public speech has thus been understood, from the pious preacher's perspective, as part of a tradition that goes back to unsurpassable models, whom the preacher could try to imitate, such as the Prophet Muhammad himself and some of his contempories and followers. While the philosophical attitude rests on the assumption that logic is universal and superior to rhetoric, the ordinary preacher's attitude would characteristically be that tradition, including the canon and models of religious rhetorical practice, is superior to human logic and has to be imitated and transmitted. The art of public speech becomes a doxological knowledge in contrast to the philosopher's epistemical knowledge. The main purpose in studying fann al-khaṭāba, from this perspective, thus has to do with the practical and salvational purposes of preaching based on the sunna of the Prophet. As an indication of this attitude, it is significant that the rules regulating the Friday sermon (khuṭba al-jum

a) actually differ according to the rite or “law school” (madhhab) to which the preacher adheres—that is, whether the preacher belongs to the Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi

i, Hanbali, or some of the Shi

i schools of law.

²³

Consequently, the art of public speech in the Islamic context is subject to “jurisprudence” (fiqh), whose experts stipulate the proper conduct or decorum for public speech on the basis of the shari

a.

In other words, the proper procedure of public speech as a formal act is to be found in Islamic law. Rather than an object for philosophical reflection, the art of public speech becomes part of what may be called a “ritual” knowledge or “know-how” (techne/ars). Every instance of speech behavior can potentially be considered this way, in relation to religiously defined “stipulations” (aḥkām) and “customs” (sunan), to use the terminology of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). In extension, this also means that the distinction between what is lawful and what is aesthetically pleasant or effective becomes blurred—or, ideally, that this difference does not count, because shari

a should function as the definer of decorum in human behavior generally. This is a subject area that has in effect hardly been noticed by Western scholars of Arab Islamic rhetoric.

SOURCES FOR THE HISTORY OF ISLAMIC ORATORY ART AND PREACHING

Although I will attempt no survey here, I will suggest some preliminary points of direction in terms of potential sources for future studies. Given the state of research, one of the first priorities in future studies in the field should be to survey the source material more thoroughly.

To begin with, one should not overlook that there are some recent works on the subject in Arabic, such as Ahmad M. al-Hufi's Fann al-khataba (1996), Ibrahim al-Badawi's Fann al-khataba (1994), Muhammad Samir al-Shawi's

Ilm al-khataba (1993), Muhammad Abu Zahra's al-Khataba: usuluha—tarikhuha azhari

usuriha

inda

al-

irab (1934), and Muhammad

Abd al-Ghani Hasan's al-Khutab wa-l-mawa

iẓ (1980). In addition, some biographical or encyclopedic works are available, such as Mu

jam al-khutaba

, a dictionary of Shi

i scholars and preachers edited by Dakhil Sayyid Hasan; S. S.

Abd al-Fattah's Ghara

ib al-khutab wa-

aja

ib al-khutaba

(1994); and Ahmad Zaki Safwat's collection of speeches and sermons from the first heroic centuries of Islamic civilization, Jamharat khutab al-

arab fi

usur al-

arabiyya al-zahira (1985). Further, homiletical instructions from educational institutions such as al-Azhar, as well as more personal books on the subject by more or less famous preachers, such as the late

Abd al-Hamid Kishk's Ila fursan al-manabir (To the Knights of the Pulpits, 1990) should not be overlooked.

As some of these book titles bespeak, many of these Muslim authors tend to focus on models from the “golden” era of Islamic history, such as the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, the great caliphs, and other famous preachers and orators. Hence, these sources are often characterized by an endeavor to reform and adjust the present state of Muslim preaching in accordance with these models. Thus, they tend to be more or less prescriptive or normative, offering rules and guidelines for the modern preacher. Although these books could be questioned on these grounds, or considered secondary, they may be well worth consideration. On the one hand, they provide information on the history of Islamic rhetoric from a contemporary perspective, with further references to primary sources. On the other hand, they can be treated as primary sources in their own right, given that the historian of Islamic rhetoric has an interest in the latest stages of its development and the concepts, ideas, and mentalities that surround the subject today. Perhaps it goes without saying that all sources should be studied from an empirical, rather than from a normative or confessional, perspective. Accordingly, the same procedure should be applied when it comes to older sources, such as the works by the famous preacher and homiletician Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201). Quite a few collections of Ibn al-Jawzi's sermons exist, several of which have also been published.

²⁵

To some extent, Ibn al-Jawzi's production has also been studied (by Swartz, Hartmann, and others). Besides the collections of sermons, Ibn al-Jawzi also left works of a more theoretical or homiletical nature, the most widely known of which is his Kitab al-qussas wa-l-mudhakkirin (‘The Book of Storytellers and Those Who Remind’). The book was edited by Swartz (1971), and it could be added that the continuous research by Swartz is a very important contribution to the field of Islamic rhetoric.²⁶

Another positive contribution made recently is Jonathan P. Berkey's Popular Preaching and Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East (2001). Not least important is Berkey's discussion of the sources of Islamic preaching in the period. Other recent works of importance are Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo (2002), by Boaz Shoshan, part of which contains valuable references to homiletical material attributed to preachers from Cairo and its surroundings in the Mamluk era,²⁷

and Khalil Athamina's study (1992) on the emergence and socio-political impact of the early preachers that are collectively known as quṣṣāṣ. A source of special interest, mentioned by Berkey, is the Kitab al-rawd al-fa

iq fi al-mawa

iz wa-l-raqa

iq (The Splendid Garden of Sermons and Edifying Tales), attributed to a certain al-Hurayfish (or al-Harfush), an obscure figure, who is supposed to have lived and preached among the Lumpenproletariat on the outskirts of Cairo in the later part of the 14th century.

²⁸

Some of the works mentioned by George Makdisi in The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West (1990) may also be of importance concerning the history of Arab Islamic rhetoric.²⁹

Collections of sermons attributed to preachers from different times and geographical locations constitute one important category of sources. Of course, it cannot be taken for granted that these sources contain sermons that were actually delivered. The sermons have come down to us in written and polished form. A quite well-known example would be the Diwan al-khutab attributed to Ibn Nubata (d. 984). Nevertheless, the collections are important, not least because they have often served as models in the art of preaching. Not a few of these collections are attributed to famous Sufi preachers, such as al-Muhasibi (d. 837) and

Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (1077–1166).

³⁰

In addition, there are the collections attributed to Shi

i authorities, such as Ibn Babawayh (d. 991) and the famous Nahj al-balagha that contain sermons and letters attributed to

Ali. These collections cannot all be enumerated here, but the ones attributed to Mahmud ibn

Umar Zamakhshari (d. 1144) and to Ibn

Abd Rabbihi (d. 940) should also be mentioned, since they have—at least, in part—been edited, studied, and translated by Western scholars.

³¹

As concerns early individual preachers and orators and their reputation, the list presented in the Fihrist by Ibn al-Nadim (d. 987), as well as the scattered references given in Kitab al-bayan wa-l-tabyin by al-Jahiz (d. 869) and

Uyun al-akhbar by Ibn Qutayba (d. 889), are also worth considering.

Another category of sources is represented by the prescriptive textbooks, or what can be called normative handbooks in the ethics of preaching. Ibn al-Jawzi's Kitab al-qussas wa-l-mudhakkirin could fall into this category. Another important example is the Kitab adab al-khatib (The Book of the Preacher's Etiquette) by Ibn al-

Attar al-Dimashqi (d. 1324), recently edited by Mohamed Ibn Hocine (Esslimani).

³²

This book, which represents a strictly Sunni perspective, can be seen as a particular instance of the genre of “books of etiquette” for different professions (judges, teachers, secretaries, and so on).³³

The book also resonates with particular areas within the vast literature of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), especially concerned with the behavior of preaching and public speech. This kind of literature should also be more thoroughly studied when it comes to rules and regulations for public speech. In addition, information concerning preachers and the art of preaching is scattered in a wide variety of source material, including chronicles and biographical literature and the works of famous Sunni authorities such as Sibt Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1257), al-Ghazali (d. 1111), Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350), Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1511), and others.³⁴

Another, quite different source that should at least be mentioned in passing is the Kitab al-burhan wujuh al-bayan (The Demonstration of the Modes of Expression), written in the mid-10th century by Ishaq ibn Ibrahim ibn Sulayman ibn Wahb.

³⁵

It might be argued that this book more properly belongs to the tradition of

ilm al-balāgha, but in view of the fact that the author's intention is to deal with several modes of expression available to man (from logic to poetry), and that the book has been described as an “attempt to apply Greek, Mu

tazili and Imami doctrines to Arabic rhetoric,”

³⁶

it might be of importance to the historian of Muslim oratory art and preaching. Perhaps it could be argued that this book, as well as its famous precursor, the 8th-century Kitab al-bayan wa-l-tabyin by al-Jahiz, was written at a time that neither the division between al-balāgha and al-khaṭāba nor the dichotomy between religious piety and philosophy had crystallized. The famous book by al-Jahiz also contains much valuable information concerning individual preachers active in the 8th century, as well the author's reflections on the genesis of the khuṭba (Friday sermon) and on oratory art more generally.³⁷

FROM CLASSICAL RHETORIC TO RHETORIC AS ELOCUTIO IN WESTERN TRADITION

Let us now return to the question of why Mehren focused exclusively on the parts concerned with tropes and figures within

ilm al-balāgha. This neglect is all the more interesting as it may hold a clue to why students of Arab Islamic rhetoric in general have neglected not only the

ilm al-ma

ānī-part of

ilm al-balāgha, as Jenssen has observed, but also one of the most significant examples of rhetoric in Muslim environments: the art of preaching and public speech (fann al-khaṭāba). Why did Mehren and his followers focus on the art of tropes and figures? What was the actual reason for their neglect of

ilm al-ma

ānī and fann al-khaṭāba?

The meaning of the term “rhetoric” is of course not to be taken at face value.³⁸

In the classical tradition of rhetoric, the subject has traditionally been characterized by a fivefold division of parts or areas of interest: the invention of the appropriate arguments for what one has the intention to say (inventio); the arrangement or ordering of the arguments in a purposive manner (dispositio); stylistic matters or the art of embellishment (elocutio); the actual performance (actio); and techniques for memorizing the speech (memoria). This is familiar to the historian of rhetoric. In common parlance of the 19th and 20th centuries, however, the term “rhetoric” has often been used in a more restricted and, at the same time, blurred sense, referring to phenomena that belong to the category called elocutio in Latin rhetoric. As a consequence, “rhetoric” tends to be merged with poetics to form what can be called literary aesthetics or stylistics.³⁹ This notion of rhetoric became increasingly dominant in Western Europe from about 1500.⁴⁰ A landmark in this development was the epistemological reform associated with Petrus Ramus (1515–72) and his co-worker Omer Talon. According to these two men, students of rhetoric were to restrict themselves to matters of style and delivery, as inventio and dispositio were more properly handled by philosophers.⁴¹ In the following centuries, this “ramistic” redefinition of rhetoric eventually came to be taken for granted in the scholarly circles of Western Europe, not least in Protestant milieus:

In other words, “rhetoric” was increasingly conceived of as an art concerned with how to communicate and, if needed, to embellish a Truth, which was to be found and established outside the rhetorical domain. Though this did not necessarily amount to an intentional degradation of rhetoric, it is instructive as a starting point for an emerging conflict between an earlier humanism (taking the Ciceronian controversia and the five-part system as its model) and a new kind of scientific rationalism.⁴³

An important step was thus taken in the direction of what can be characterized as a platonizing tendency⁴⁴ that was to culminate in the 17th century when Descartes and others began to foreshadow a completely scientific language purged of rhetorical investments.⁴⁵ Henceforth, “rhetoric” tended to mean either flowery language or simple demagoguery. At the same time, a culture of intimacy was beginning to develop, eventually blossoming in the Romantic era. It is no accident that a new discipline called aesthetics was formulated as a response to these currents, influenced by Alexander G. Baumgarten's Aesthetica (1750) and Immanuel Kant's definition of art as an autonomous and disinterested activity. Although the Romantics' interest in poetry and other purely aesthetical expressions of culture can be understood as an an attempt to defend art against the onslaught of scientific rationalism, it was nevertheless based on the presupposition that the artist's work is clearly differentiated from (and even subordinated to) science and philosophy.⁴⁶ Moreover, the Romantic era was characterized by a deep suspicion toward rhetoric—a suspicion that many poets and artists tended to share with the “rationalists.”

Evidently, Mehren's pioneering work Die Rhetorik der Araber was written in the context of these developments. The shortcomings of his work, as demonstrated by Jenssen, and the fact that later studies of Arabic rhetoric have shown so little interest in the medieval homily, as observed by Swartz, can be explained as consequences of the contemporary conception of “rhetoric” prevalent in Western Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries.

⁴⁷

The definition of rhetoric as a system of tropes and figures was common knowledge (doxa) at the time. Hence, it would come as little surprise that, when they were looking for an equivalent to rhetoric in Arabic sources, Western scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries found that it was the system of tropes and figures within

ilm al-balāgha and nothing else that should be studied.

Unfortunately, the exclusive focus on

ilm al-balāgha in Western scholarship has not only neglected the tradition of oratory art (fann al-khaṭāba); but it has also sometimes resulted in indadequate comparisons. The problem can be illustrated by taking a closer look at one of the few attempts that have been made to compare Islamic rhetoric with its Western counterpart. As indicated in the title of his essay, Smyth explicitly tries to compare rhetoric in the “Christian” West and the Islamic

ilm al-balāgha. His point of departure is that, in the Islamic context, rhetoric is translated as

ilm al-balāgha. Scholars have referred to this science as rhetoric because of “the specific points of coincidence between the art of persuasion and the study of eloquence.”

⁴⁸

Smyth, however, is careful not to take their similarity for granted:

There is no reason to reject this general characterization of the subject as compared with rhetoric in the “Western” sense. What there is reason to reject, however, is the adequacy of the comparison. In view of the well-attested significance of public speech and oratory art in Muslim history there is something wrong with a conclusion that gives the impression that there is no “rhetoric” in Islamic tradition other than the concern for interpreting the tropes and figures, while rhetoric in the Christian West is characterized by dispute and difference of opinion.

⁵⁰

Part of the problem is that Smyth does not provide any clear definition of the word “rhetoric.” Instead, he oscillates between two different meanings that can be broadly characterized as “literary” in the case of

ilm al-balāgha, and “parliamentarian” in the case of Western rhetoric. In the latter case, the word “rhetoric” highlights the practice of public speech and the Ciceronian ideal of controversia, while in the first case, the word is taken to refer to the study of metaphors and figures (rhetoric as elocutio). The problem is that this probably has more to do with a fluctuation in the meaning of the term “rhetoric” in Western tradition than with inherent cultural differences between East and West. Another problem is Smyth's explicit conflation of “Western” and “Christian.” Whether dispute and difference of opinion are characteristic of the Christian West is certainly open to question.

⁵¹

More likely, preaching and propagation of religious norms came before “public debate” in most traditional societies and thus are not peculiar to Muslim behavior. Modern ideals of democracy and parliamentarian norms were as absent in pre-modern Christian societies as in pre-modern Muslim societies.⁵²

Moreover, debate and dialogue are not unheard of in Islamic history, though one may have to look beyond

ilm al-balāgha and fann al-khaṭāba to find their traces. Aristotle's book on the art of dialectical disputation (Topics), the art that in medieval Europe constituted the third subject within trivium, alongside grammar and rhetoric, was translated into Arabic in the 8th century, and in the following centuries the art of disputation became the practice par excellence in Muslim legal studies and theology.

⁵³

There is also a quite extensive literature on “the art of argumentation” (adab al-jadal) that should be taken into account.⁵⁴

.

THE COMMON HERITAGE: LATE ANTIQUITY

Neither

ilm al-balāgha nor fann al-khaṭāba is the result of completely “native” traditions peculiar to Arab Islamic culture. In both cases, pre-Islamic traditions of rhetoric and the educational systems of late antiquity certainly played a significant role. The influence of Greek rhetoric on the two variants of Islamic rhetoric does not, however, amount to saying that Arab Islamic rhetoric is simply an amalgam of traditions that somehow are the property of Western culture and civilization. On the contrary: the notion of a more or less continuous Western tradition, tracing its origins to antique civilization in Greece, is problematic. The presupposition that ancient Greece was a “Western” society has lost its former credibility, and this should be taken into serious consideration when it comes to the history of rhetoric. “Greek” culture itself (both ancient and classical, to say nothing of its Hellenistic permutations) was the product of a composite of influences, some of which emanated from the East (ancient Babylon, Egypt, etc.).

⁵⁵

The societies in the lands around the Mediterranean during the centuries prior to Islam, during what is referred to as the period of late antiquity or, in terms of the history of rhetoric, the “Second Sophistic,”⁵⁶

were societies where professional rhetoricians practiced their art as itinerant performers and teachers, traveling from one urban center to another in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East, converging at such places as Antioch in Syria, Gaza in Palestine, and Alexandria in Egypt. These itinerant performers and teachers of rhetoric were invited by local rulers and municipal governments to deliver orations at public celebrations or to teach young men the art of rhetoric, then part of the traditional enkyklios paideia (rounded education). In several respects, this structure continued well into the 7th and 8th centuries. Archeaological and other evidence suggests that the Arab conquests did not result in any major break in continuity in the eastern Mediterranean provinces in matters of architecture and administration.⁵⁷ Cultural traditions may be less stable than buildings, but as long as the apparatus of state and cities lasted, at least some remnants of classical education, including rhetorical training, must have been known and available in some form. The subject should be re-examined in the light of the new advances and results in modern scholarship on late antiquity.⁵⁸

The linguistic and cultural pattern in the eastern Mediterranean in late antiquity was extremely complex, and the traditions of Christian and Jewish preaching also formed part of the background against which Islamic preaching would emerge and define itself. Furthermore, it tends to be overlooked that Semitic culture had already been represented by Arabs in the region since at least the Nabataean period, which ended in A.D. 106.⁵⁹

One important case of special interest to the historian of rhetoric is presented by the city of Gaza in Palestine, where there was a lively school of Christian rhetoricians and poets as late as in the 6th century.⁶⁰ Other, similar examples from about the same time are found at Berytus (Beirut) and in Alexandria and Antioch, two very important cities in late antiquity.⁶¹ In general, the era was characterized by attempts to reconcile philosophy and rhetoric and by attempts to assimilate “pagan” rhetorics into the culture of the now dominant religion (Christianity). Later, these developments were taken further by Muslim rhetoricians and philosophers.

The written sources of the period attest to a high frequency of translations to and from Greek and the different languages of the Near Eastern region, especially Syriac.⁶²

That many religous, philosophical, and literary works were quickly translated from Greek into Syriac is a well-proven and established fact, but this process also happened in reverse more often than is usually realized.⁶³ This was the case with, for instance, St. Ephrem, whose works were translated from Syriac into Greek and later frequently cited in Greek monastic literature. As Averil Cameron says, contemporaries may not have felt the distinction between “Greek” culture and “Semitic” culture with the same force as we do.⁶⁴ One problem lies with the terminology traditionally used when discussing these matters. “Syriac” denotes a language, not a culture or an ethnicity:

To take things a bit further, it is important to realize that the bulk of philosophical thinking and learning produced in late antiquity was not the work of figures that might be termed Westerners: “[yet this]…Hellenism was not of necessity Greek in origin….”⁶⁶

This does not mean, however, that one has to subscribe to the theory that late antiquity was somehow an Oriental world. At least according to al-Azmeh, this would simply be to construct an Orientalism in reverse. Rather, it is a matter of perceiving the world of late antiquity without resorting to trans-historical nominatives, such as Islam or Hellenism, or the Orient and the Occident.⁶⁷

Whatever the terminology, traditions in culture and learning of late antiquity continued in some form or another in the lands of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Iraq after the Muslim conquests, though they successively came to be expressed in new idioms, the most important of which was the new language, Arabic. In the field of rhetoric, it meant that the old traditions came to be adapted to the special needs of Muslim preachers, just as the ancient tradition of pagan rhetoric had once been adjusted for Christian purposes. Although the practice of public speech and preaching in Islamic contexts also had roots in traditions stemming from the Arabian peninsula (as practiced by the pre-Islamic kāhin, poet, or khaṭīb, such as the the famous Quss ibn Sa

ida al-Iyadi),

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the art of speech as such was studied theoretically in terms of existing paradigms in the urban areas of the eastern parts of the Mediterranean, now part of the Islamic caliphate. In turn, this surely must have had repercussions on the practice of oratory art. Moreover, the Hellenistic influences had already penetrated the peninsula prior to the rise of Islam and perhaps had a greater impact on pre-Islamic Arabian culture than has traditionally been assumed to be the case.⁶⁹

One important issue for future studies to deal with is the extent to which the exercises known as progymnasmata, associated with Aphthonius, Theon, Hermogenes and Nikolaos, and other influential teachers of rhetoric in late antiquity, continued in Islamic environments.

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According to Frank D'Angelo, the progymnasmata of Aphthonius certainly did have an influence on Arabic traditions of education.⁷¹

However interesting this observation may be, it is unfortunate that he gives no evidence or references to actually support it. To substantiate this would be an important task for future studies. Further, it would be interesting to compare the texts attributed to medieval Muslim preachers in the region of Syria and Palestine with preachers and orators in the same area prior to Islam, such as, Chorcius (in 6th-century Palestine).⁷²

Just as important to scrutinize more closely is the relationship between Muslim traditions of preaching and the rhetorics and homiletics of the later Byzantine Empire. The culmination of later Byzantine rhetoric is often thought to have taken place during the 11th and 12th centuries, with names such as Gregory Pardos (Gregory of Corinth) and Zigabenos.⁷³

These rhetoricians can be seen as late exponents of a “Greek” tradition formulated in late antiquity by Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Menander, but they may also have been influenced by Arab Islamic traditions of rhetoric as well as by contemporary Muslim preachers and orators. At least, the possibility cannot be ruled out without further investigations. Of particular interest in this context is the often noted tendency in contemporary Byzantine oratory to compare the Byzantine emperor with the prophet king David and the so-called ‘Davidic’ eloquence of the period.⁷⁴

In reality, this may not be as “unparalleled in the history of rhetoric” as is sometimes thought,⁷⁵

in view of the fact that Old Testament figures such as David and Adam, as presented in the Qur

an, are also common in medieval Islamic sermons.

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These issues concerning the relationship between Islam and Byzantium are all the more important because the new interest in rhetoric in Western Europe during the Renaissance is often portrayed as dependent on the influence of Byzantine intellectuals, coming from the East to the West.⁷⁷

Two 15th-century figures are often mentioned as having special importance in this process of transmitting knowledge: George of Trebizond, a Byzantine intellectual who was invited to Venice and came to spend the rest of his life in Italy as a teacher of rhetoric, and Aldo Manuzio, a famous Venetian printer and collector of Greek manuscripts. This account of how the traditions of rhetoric and philosophy were eventually rediscovered during the 15th and 16th centuries may seem a bit simplified. In particular, it tends to reaffirm that the history of rhetoric and philosophy has always been a “Western” affair, though the continuity was temporarily broken during the Middle Ages. Thanks to people such as George of Trebizond and Aldo Manuzio, the heritage was eventually restored to its rightful owners, so to speak. Considering the possibility that the Byzantine culture of the time was in turn influenced by Arab Islamic traditions, the picture may be more complex. In the light of new theories and evidence concerning the extent of translations from Arabic into Greek during a period stretching from about the 10th to the 13th century, the old thesis of the “Byzantine Renaissance” as the result of internal developments within the Byzantine Empire (Lemerle) has increasingly been rejected by a younger generation of scholars.⁷⁸ This of course should be taken into account when considering the influence of Byzantine teachers of rhetoric on the development and redefinition of rhetoric in Western Europe during the Renaissance. It is a well-known fact that scholarly and intellectual developments in Western Europe went through several stages of influences from the East from the 12th century onward. Somewhat schematically, this development can be differentiated in two phases. The first, from about the 12th century to the 14th, was characterized by an interest in philosophy, including the Arabic version of Aristotle's book on rhetoric together with Muslim philosophers' commentaries.⁷⁹ The second phase, stretching from about the time of the Renaissance onward, was characterized by a broader interest in Arabic thought and literature in general. By this time, collections of Arabic books and manuscripts had been acquired by the libraries of Europe, and professorships in Arabic had begun to be established in Paris, Leiden, Rome, and Oxford.⁸⁰

As concerns the Byzantine “connection,” it is probable that there were places of worship at an early date for Muslim captives and others in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, well before the Latin conquest, and that were qadis and preachers in these communities, as has been suggested by Clifford Bosworth.

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In the early 11th century, the Friday sermon (khuṭba al-jum

a) held in Constantinople is said to have been pronounced in allegiance with the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt.

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Correspondingly, Christians from the Byzantine Empire and other parts of Europe could live in Muslim areas, protected by the institution of amān, or safe conduct, for limited periods of time. This allowed for the colonies of Italians, Greeks, and Franks in the coastal towns of Egypt and Syria and in Seljuq Anatolia.⁸³

Furthermore, there were the regions called thughūr in Arabic—that is, frontier areas between the Muslim-dominated areas and the domains of the Christian state of Byzantium. These areas acquired a mixed population from Umayyad times onward. One of the Byzantine emperors, Leo the Isaurian (ca. 685–741), the defender of Constantinople, actually sprang from one of these regions of the thughūr, and according to Arabic sources, he was able to express himself eloquently in both Greek and Arabic.⁸⁴

Thus, according to Bosworth and others, Arab–Byzantine relations had significant moments of peaceful intercourse and diplomatic, cultural, and commercial contact. Whereas the Muslims had a contemptuous attitude toward the Christians of Western Europe, they were inclined to regard Byzantium as a civilization on an equal footing with their own.⁸⁵

Although some sources attest to this positive view of the inhabitants of Byzantium (in contrast to the “barbarians” of Western Europe),⁸⁶

Bosworth tends to ignore that some Muslim circles showed a phil-hellenistically motivated contempt for the Byzantines, especially those circles associated with the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad during the 9th century. According to the picture presented in some of the sources pertaining to this milieu, the Christian rulers and inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire were clearly different from and inferior to the “Greeks” of antiquity, who had produced such authorities as Plato and Aristotle. The perspective is aptly summarized by Dimitri Gutas:

As discussed by Gutas, this anti–Byzantine (and anti–Christian) propaganda of the early Abbasid rulers is reflected in sources particularly associated with such figures as al-Jahiz and some of the Mu

tazilite theologians, who tended to use it in their intellectual battles against Muslim adversaries who dismissed “Greek” philosophy.

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Another particular case in point is the later historian al-Mas

udi (d. 956), according to whom the Greeks descended from Japheth while the Byzantines descended from Shem and simply “imitated” the glory of the former:

The main reason for this decadence, according to the Muslim perspective, is the religion of Christianity. Henceforth, the signs of philosophy and learning were effaced, and the heritage from the ancient Greeks corrupted. In continuity with their pre–Islamic Sassanid rulers, the early Abbasids actually regarded themselves as the upholders of a glorious heritage of learned culture that the Christians had tried to efface. In Sassanid times, this perspective constituted part of an imperial ideology that also claimed that the wisdom of the ancient “Greeks” stemmed from Zoroastrian sources.⁹⁰

In any case, it is clear that some of the early Christian emperors (Justinian, for example) did persecute people associated with pagan philosophical traditions and closed the academy of Plato in Athens in A.D. 529, and that some of those philosophers were given asylum in Sassanid realms during the reign of Chosroes I Anushirwan (r. 531–78) and his successors. This also led to an upsurge of interest in the ancient wisdom of antiquity that was to continue under Muslim rulers in the area. In particular, it led to the important “Translation Movement” from Greek into Arabic that marked the early years of the Abbasid caliphate, as Gutas writes, and that was later to have repercussions on intellectual development in Western Europe.