Asas al-Balagha
AuthorAl-Zamakhshari
Original titleأساس البلاغة
LanguageArabic
GenreDictionary
Publication date
12th century

Asās al-Balāghah ("The Foundation of Eloquence")[1] is a thesaurus and dictionary of figurative speech by Al-Zamakhshari.[2][3] Zamakhshari authored the work, in part, to reconcile what he viewed as the miraculous nature of the Qur'an with his theological views.[4]

Notable as the earliest fully alphabetical Arabic lexicography,[5] and in addition for the metaphorical content Zamakhshari includes with his literal definitions.[6] Zamakhshari's system lists words in alphabetical order according to the first component of their tri-radical consonant letters to the last. He excludes complicated derived and rare forms, such quadrilaterals and quintilaterals.[7] Zamakhshari's goal was to catalog both the literal and figurative meanings of Arabic words, and he used examples from the Qur'an and hadith for both.[7] He viewed words almost as living organisms that were given life by the way they were used in rhetoric.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Wen-chin Ouyang, Literary Criticism in Medieval Arabic-Islamic Culture: The Making of a Tradition, pg. 202. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. ISBN 9780748608973
  2. ↑ John Esposito, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, pg. 346. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN 9780195125597
  3. ↑ Avigail S. Noy, Don't Be Absurd: The Term Muhal in Sibawayh's Kitab. Taken from The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics: Sībawayhi and Early Arabic Grammatical Theory, pg. 34. Ed. Amal Elesha Marogy. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2012. ISBN 9789004229655
  4. ↑ Kenneth Setton, Norman P. Zacour and Harry W. Hazard. A History of the Crusades, pg. 32. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. ISBN 9780299091446
  5. ↑ Muhammad Zubair Siddiqi, Khuda Bakhsh Lectures, Indian and Islamic. Patna: Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library, 1993.
  6. ↑ Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, vol. 2, L-Z, pg. 468. Eds. Paul Starkey and Julie Scott Meisami. London: Routledge, 1998. ISBN 9780415068086
  7. 1 2 John A. Haywood, Arabic Lexicography: Its History, and Its Place in the General History of Lexicography, pg. 106. 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill Archive, 1960. OCLC 5693192
  8. ↑ Haywood, Arabic Lexicography, pg. 107.
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