Phenomenon of Death in Nahj al-Balāgha: A Qualitative Study

Death and the way humans facing it differs in various societies. In the present article, with the method of “thematic analysis” and with the six-step pattern of Braun and Clarke, a model for religious morbidity has been provided which focuses on Nahj al-balāgha. The goal of the present study is exploring the quiddity, reason, and quality of death from the perspective of Nahj al-balāgha. First, by choosing the explicit theme of “mawt” (death) and its synonyms, inductively 171 preliminary themes were derived, which then were cut down to 77 basic themes. These basic themes later were reduced to 31 organizing themes and 4 global themes (“the inner truth and function of death”, “features and requirements of death “, “positive encounter with death”, and “negative encounter with death”. In analyzing the reason of death, the results of the study consider the inner truth of death as a divine tradition, and the function of death as the goal of this world as well as a medium for transferring and returning to the other world and beginning of a new life. As an answer to the quiddity of death, in place of explicating the mysterious and unexplainable quiddity of death, twelve features and requirements of death have been investigated, from which the feature of inevitability has the most frequency. Nahj al-balāgha introduces positive encounter as acceptance, preparedness, anticipation, nearness assumption, remembrance, postponement, and readiness for and reception of a valuable death (martyrdom). It also introduces negative encounter as farness assumption, sadness, ignorance, grandness assumption, and morbidity.