Ibn Abī Al-Isbaʽ and His Place in ʽılm Al-Badīʽ

Ibn Abī al-Isbaʽ was a prominent man of letters who spent most of his life under the Ayyubid rule and his last years in the Mamluk Sultanate. Regarded as the “Poet of Egypt,” he was one of the leading scholars in ʽilm al- balāgha, the rhetorical science. Besides his own works, Ibn Abī al-Isbaʽ had a considerable number of his poems included in literature books and biographies, and he made abundant use of literary devices in these poems. Ibn Abī al-Isbaʽ made significant contributions to ʽilm al-badīʽ, the science of embellishments, especially with his works Taḥrīr al-Taḥbīr (Writing Elegant Compositions) and Badīʽal-Qurʼān (Embellishments in the Koran). Benefiting from the rhetorical knowledge of such orators as Ibn al- Mu’tazz and Qudāmah ibn Jaʽfar, who were pioneers in the science of embellishments, Ibn Abī al- Isbaʽ researched 30 literary figures in ʽilm al-badīʽ. This distinguished him from his predecessors, and there were even times when he criticized those who preceded him. He explained literary figures using examples from Arabic poetry, verses from the Koran, the hadith, sayings of the elders, proverbs, and aphorisms. Another important contribution he made to rhetorical science was how he accounted for the differences between similar literary figures. After a brief summary of Ibn Abī al-Isbaʽ’s life and character as a scholar, this article will define and further clarify the 30 literary figures that the author unearthed in his work Taḥrīr al-Taḥbīr using at least one of the author’s own examples to examine each one.