Within the framework of kalimat, the international workshop – held in English and Arabic – interrogates the semantic range of rhetorical and poetical terms, subsumed under khaṭāba, shiʿriyya, and balāgha in the Arabic tradition.

What is commonly understood as rhetoric in Western intellectual traditions since antiquity was expressed in the history of Arabic literature before modernity using different notions. For instance, the traditions of khaṭāba (Aristotelian rhetoric) and balāgha (Arabic rhetoric and poetics) are traditionally framed as distinct projects. Furthermore, the inception of balāgha as a defined science with its three branches (ʿilm al-bayān, ʿilm al-badīʿ, and ʿilm al-maʿānī) cannot be traced to the time before the contributions of Sirāj al-Dīn al-Sakkākī (d. 626/1229) and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī (d. 739/1338). However, meta-concepts like balāgha, bayān, naẓm, majāz, and ḥaqīqa were tackled earlier in various discourses highlighting the centrality of the Arabic language as well as Qurʾanic revelation and its ethical goals. In other words, there is no unified Arabic rhetoric, but different evolving traditions of thought with their own terminologies. The Arabic concepts form thus part of the larger configuration of the Islamic intellectual tradition including its various sciences with their interest in (philosophy of) language, epistemology, and theology.
The main goal of the workshop is to explore the changing semantics, the central sources as well as the various discursive and practical contexts of rhetorical and poetical concepts in the Arabic tradition before the age of book printing as well as their potential for a literary theory avant la lettre. Our main focus is the entanglement and semantic shifts of central terms and concepts in the context of various discourses of Islamic scholarship. We are interested in both the fundamental notions related to eloquence and oratory, and the stylistic repertoires, the relationship of rhetoric to poetics and poetry analysis, philosophy/falsafa, adab, Qurʾanic exegesis, legal hermeneutics/fiqh and theological discourse/kalām.

Configuration 
The first aim of the workshop is to map central rhetorical and poetical terms in their multiple relations. How does the tradition of balāgha offer a coherent system of rhetorical and poetic subdisciplines? How do the concepts, subsumed under rhetoric – such as bayān, balāgha and khaṭāba – relate to each other? Why was there a need to augment the use and significance of rhetorical or poetical notions? How is rhetoric-poetics in the Arabic tradition entangled with theological/philosophical positions, how is it related to claims about language, morality, and politics? How did/do Arabic rhetoric and poetics translate into other traditions, both Eastern and Western?

Transformation
The second aim of the workshop is to delineate fundamental transformations, that is, understanding the conceptual shifts, for instance, from early notions of rhetoric-poetics such as the qurʾanic bayān to the emergence of the linguistic sciences and to the so-called standard theory of balāgha, following ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī (d. 474/1081). What were the needs that required certain potential shifts in the rhetorical and poetical tradition and how did these changes substantiate? To what extent are many concepts, notably central figures of speech, so instable in their terminology, their use and even their precise meanings? And why? How do the shifts of significance within rhetorical terms manifest conceptual transformations in the broader intellectual tradition of Islamic thought and literature?

Contact: kalimat@geschkult.fu-berlin.de

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Thursday January, 15

10:00 Arrival and Welcome Address 

10:30 Opening Lecure

Chokri Mabkhout (Mohamed bin Zayed University for the Humanities)
لاستدلال البلاغي 
(“Rhetorical Inference” – online and in Arabic)

12:00 Lunch Break

13:15 Session 1

Ali Hussein (University of Haifa)
The Notion of tamthīl and Its Development in Classical Arabic Rhetoric

Syrinx von Hees & Andreas Knöll (University of Münster)
The Semantic Range of badīʿ: Historical Development and Analytical Perspectives

14:45 Coffee Break

15:15 Session 2

Hussein Abdul-Raof (Taibah University)
On jinās in Arabic: a Typological Analysis, Evolution, and Development                  

Orçun Öztürk (University of Münster) 
Tajnīs between Waves of lafẓ and maʿnā

16:35 Coffee Break 

17:00 Session 3

Tom Abi Samra (Princeton University/Freie Universität Berlin) 
Taḍmīn (online)

Chiara Fontana (University of Bologna) 
Tashbīh and the Craft of Thought: Rhetoric, Analogy, and Worldmaking in Classical Arabic Culture

19:30 Dinner for Speakers

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Friday January, 16

10:30 Recap Day 1

10:45 Session 4

Feriel Bouhafa (University of Würzburg) 
Ibn Rushd on khiṭāba. A-Meta-Discourse on Persuasion and Consensus Building in Islamic Society

Beatrice Gruendler (Freie Universität Berlin)
On ṭibāq and idāra

12:05 Lunch Break

13:30 Session 5

Johannes Stephan (Freie Universität Berlin) 
Fiction (ikhtirāʿ) vs. Image Evocation (takhyīl)

Luca Rizzo (Independent)
Tawriya, īhām, takhyīl: A Matter of Synonymy, or Can a Rhetorical Theory Be Reconstructed from a Definition?

14:50 Coffee Break

15:15 Session 6

Chafika Ouail (University of Nizwa)
البلاغة فوق البلاغة. قراءة في ممكنات النظم من منظور الميتا-تأويل 
(“Balāgha beyond balāgha: Exploring the Potential of Naẓm from the Perspective of Meta-Hermeneutics” – online and in Arabic)

16:00 Final Discussion 

16:30 End of Workshop