Masterpieces of Rhetoric Methood (nahj Al-balagha)

Style and Oratorical Genius

Such an eloquence if it speaks of rebuke it will pounce on the tongue of storm violently! And if it threatens spoil and spoilers it will explode into volcanoes having lights and sounds. And if it calls for contemplation, it will associate with your source of sense and origin of thought and so it drives you to what it wants and connects you with the cosmos fitly.

Form incorporates with meaning as heat does with fire, light with the sun, air with air; you are not before it but like a person before the flood while it slopes, the sea as it surges and the wind as it encircles.

But when he speaks to you on the splendour of existence and beauty of creation it writes, on your heart, with an ink of the stars of the sky.

Some expression has the gleam of flash, and the smile of the sky during the nights of winter.

This is as to the subject. As for style, Ali bin Abi Talib is the magician of performance literature can not be without style, and the structure is innate to meaning, and the image is not less than the substance. And which art with its conditions of directing is less in concern than the conditions of the subject.

Ali bin Abi Talib’s portion of artistic taste, or the aesthetic sense, is rare in existence. This taste was the natural controlling measure for his literary disposition, as for his disposition, it is one of those who have talent and originality, who see, hence feel and realize then their tongues start ahead with what their hearts surge and the perceptions of their sens to show in a spontaneous rush. Therefore Ali’s literature was charactarized by faithfulness and so was his life. Faithfulness is but the first feature of the unique art and the measure of style which does not deceive.

The conditions of rhetoric, which is the fitness of speech for the situation, has not come together for an Arabic literary man as they had for Ali bin Abi Talib. His composition is an ideal for this rhetoric after the Quran. It is succinct with clarity, strong, vigorous, perfectly harmonized related to what is between its expressions, meanings, aims agreement, sweet, in tone at the air, having a musical effect. It eases and softens at positions which do not need hardship.

It becomes hard and violent in other positions especially the hour of speaking on hypocrites, trickers, and this world seekers at the expense of the poor and the oppressed, and holders of lost rights. Ali’s style is frank like his heart and mind, faithful like his intention, so it is not surprising to be a method for rhetoric.

Ali’s style reached a level in sincerity that even rhyme became above artificiality and affectation. So it is, despite the plentifulness of interchanging, rhymed sentences, far from artistry and nearer to be of overflowing disposition.

Look to this rhymed speech and what it contains of soundness of disposition: “Allah knows the uproar of beasts in the deserts, the sins of people in seclusions, the clashes of whales in deep seas and the popple of waters by stormy winds”. Or to this speech of one of his sermons: “So is the sky and the air, the winds and the water, so look at the sun and the moon, vegetation and plants, water and stone, the succession of this night and day, the springing of these seas, the large number of the mountains, the height of their peaks, the diversity of these languages, and the variety of tongues…etc”.

I plea to you to keep this rhyme which flows spontanously then he decorated them with piercing stars and ran through them a shining sun and an effulgent moon in a revolving orbit and a moving ceiling…etc.” If you try to change a rhymed word in all these wonders with another unrhymed one will know how its shining fades and its beauty faints, and taste loses its originality and accuracy which are the evidence and measure.

Rhyme in these Allawiyan speeches is an aristic necessity which disposition requires, that disposition which intermixed with artificility highly as if they are of one metal which changes into poetry, having rhythms and tunes accompanying meaning with verbal images of their atmosphere and nature.

There are marvels in Imam’s rhyme which add melody on melody, in a nice way and dissolves the effect in effect in refrains which nothing is more rhythmical on hearing than them, or more loved in reverberation. An example of that is what we have mentioned of his rhymes before. Then here are these words, delicious to the ear and taste alike: “I am a new day, and I am a witness upon you, hence do through me what is good and say what is good.”

If we say that Ali’s style has frankness of meaning, eloquence of performance, soundness of taste, we indicate to the reader to return to this Masterpieces of Nahj Al-Balaghah to see how Ali’s words explode from sources whose bottoms are for in their material, and in which a wonderful artistis dress it undulates and runs. Take thses nice expressions of his speech: “Man is hidden under his tongue” and his saying: “longanimity is a kinsfolk”, or his saying: that whose trunk softened his branches thickened or his saying:

“Every container beeomes narrower with what is put in it except the container of knowledge as it becomes wider, or his saying “if a mountain loves me, it will crumble” or in these wonderful sayings: “knowledge guards you, while you have to guard wealth. Many a man is enchanted by good speech of him. When this world advances to anyone (with its favours) it attributes to him other’s merits; and when it turns away from him it deprives him of his own merites” All people should be equal in right before you. Do good and do not despise any part of it because the small part of it is big and the little amount of it is much.

The warehousers of wealth have perished although they are alive no rich person has been relished with but with which a poor has suffered of hunger.

Then listen to this expression which reaches the peak of artistic beauty as he wanted to deseribe his ability in disposing of kufah city however he likes he said: “Nothing (is left to me) but kufah I grasp it and spread it out).

You can see, in these sayings, an originality of thought and expression; this originality which always accompanies the true literary man and He does not miss it unless he has missed the literary charcacter itself.

Ali’s style reaches the peak of beauty in oratorical situations, namely the situations in which his vigorous sentiments break out, his imagination glows hot pictures of the events of life that he had experienced popple in it. Thus rhetoric fills his heart, and flows out on his tongue like the outflowing of seas. His style is characterized, in the situations like these by repetition seeking avowal and influence, and the use of synonyms, the choosing of lucid resounding words.

Somethime the different kinds of expression atternate varying from statement to interrogation exclamation, to condemnation. Places of stop are strong, and healing to the psyche. This has the meaning of rhetoric and the spirit of art. Take an example of which, the famous jihad sermon, with which Ali addressed people when Sufyan bin Awf Al-Asadi raided upon Al-Anbar city in Iraq and killed his governor there:

This is the brother of Ghamid whose horses have reached Alanbaar and killed Hassan ibn Hassan Al-Bakri. They have removed your horses from their armory garrison, and killed righteous men of you.

“I have been told that the person of them has been breaking into the house of Muslim women and allied women taking off her anklet and her bracelet her necklace and her earrings; then they got back laden with wealth no one of them wounded and no blood of them was shed. If any Muslim dies of grief after all this he is not to be blamed but rather to me the matter is worthy of death.

How strange! how strange! By Allah it put one’s heart to death and brings grief to see the agreement of those people on their wrong and your dispersion from your right. Woe and grief befall you. As you have become a target at which arrowa are shot. You are raided on and don’t raid on, you are invaded but you don’t invade. Allah is disobeyed and you are contented with it.

Look to Imam’s ability in these summed up words. He advances gradually in stirring his hearers’ feeling till he reaches with them to what he wants. He proceeded through way having eloquence of performance and power of influence. He tells his people of Sufyan bin Awf’s invasion of Al-Anbar, which implies dishonour that afflick them. Then he fells them that this aggressor killed Amir Al-Muminin’s governor among others, and he is not satisfied, rather he inserted his sword in many necks of their men and families.

In the second paragraph of the sermon, Imam went to the position of Zeal for the hearers, to the impulse of determination and ardour of every Arab’s self, that is woman’s honour. Ali knows that some Arabs do not sacrifice themselves but to protect a woman’s reputation a young woman’s honour, yet he scolds those people for sitting without protecting the woman whose shelter was violated by invadors and they went safely without any wound or loss of life.

Then he shows what feels of astonishment and confusion, about a strange matter as his enemies cling to the wrong and support it, they adopt evil and so invade Al-Anbar to practice it, while his champions slacken in assissting the right, they let it down and fail to defend it.

It is natural that Imam gets angry in such a situation, so his phrase carries all the anger agitated in his self, hence it comes hotly, severe, rhymed, tornapart, malcontant “Woe and grief befall you. You have become the target at which arrows are shot. You are raided on you do not raidon. You are invaded and you do not invade. Allah is being disobeyed you are contented with it.

His passion may arouse and break, some of which crowds the other like these successive torn up words: “I never felt weak, coward, nor did I betray or being languid.” And this passion may be burnt with a rebellious pain which comes from people for whom he wanted welfare. While they didn’t want it for them-selves due to aheedlessness in their minds, and weakness in their determination, so he addresses them with this furious, rebellious speech, saying: “What is the matter with me! I see you wakeful but sleeping, present but absent, hearing but deaf and speaking but dumb…etc.”

Arab orators are many, and oratory is one of literary arts which had been known during periods of pre-islamic and Islam, especially in the era of the Prophet and Prudent Caliphes as they were in need of it. Yet the great orator of the Mohammedon era is the Prophet, without dispute. As for the prudent Caliphes and the following of Arab periods as a whole, no one reached the extent Ali bin Abi Talib has reached in this respect.

The esay uttering, which Ali had, was an element of his character, so was the powerful eloquence for what is included of the elements of disposition and artificiality a like. However Allah facilitated for him the complete equipment which oratory requires of other constituents that we mentioned before. Allah characterized him with sound nature, sublime taste, and fascinating eloquence, then provisions of knowledge which Ali was distinguished from his mates, right evidence, irrefutable power of persuasion, and rare genius in improvisation.

Add to that his truthfulness which has no limits, which is a necessity in every successful serman, as well as his numerous painful experiences which revealed, to his great mind, people’s natures, morals, and society’s features and impulses. Then there is the solid belief which is hard to be complied with, and that deep pain mingled with deep sympathy, and purity of heart, soundness of conscience and noblity of aim.

It is hard to find, in the personalities of history, one who gathered all these conditions that make their holder a unique orator, except Ali bin Abi Talib and very few people. You are not to do anything but to review these conditions, then review famous orators in the two worlds the eastern and the western, so as to realize that our speech is right with no exaggeration.

Ibn Abi Talib, on pulpit, is calm, very confident in himself and in the justice of his speech. Then he has a strong acumen, quich-witted, discovers people’s inner selves, the desires of spirits, and the bottoms of hearts, his heart is overflowing with feelings of liberty, humanity, and virtues. When his magical tongue started off in what his heart arose, he furnished people with it stirs in them sleeping virtues and faint feelings.

As for his oratorical composition, it can not be described except that it is the basis of Arabic rhetoric. Abu Hilal Al-Askari, author of “Al-Sina’atayn” says: “The importance is not in mentioning the meanings only, but it is in the goodness of expression, as well as its purity, its fineness, its splendour, its honesty, its clarity, and plentity of its sweets and water, in addition to rightness of formulation and structure, and emptiness of the crookedness of versification or formation.

Some words are grand as it pulls the tails of purple, proudly and arrogantly. Some words have a clatter like creeping soldiers in tinplates. Some are like a two-edged sword. Some are like a thick veil which throws on some feeling so as to shelter sharpness and reduce their hardship. Some have the smile of sky in the nights of winter! Some speech works like alash, some flows like a pure spring.

All this is true of Ali’s sermons in their vocabulary and expressions. In addition, a sermon becomes better if it is impressed by these verbal features, on the view of “Al-Sina’atayn’s” author. How is it if they were like Ibn Abi Talib’s sermons which comprise the splendour of these characteristics of expression with the splendour of meaning and its powerfulness and grandeur.

Here is something of what we have said in the third volume of our book “Imam Ali: the voice of Humanitarian Justice” as to Imam’s eloquence, especially in his sermons:

It is a method for rhetoric taking, from thought, imagination, and feeling, masterpieces connected with sublime artistic taste as long as man remains, and his imagination, feeling and thought remain, interrelated consistent with its masterpieces, balanced, exploding with blazing sense and distant perception, flowing with the agony of reality, heat of truth, and the eagerness to know what is beyond this reality, harmonious comprising of beauty of topic and that of directing to the limit that the expression mingles with significance,

or form with meaning, as heat mingles with fire, light with the sun, air with air; you are not before it but the way a person is before the flood while it slopes, the sea as it surges, and the wind as it encircles. Or like one in front of the natural event which must be necessarily as it is exitstent of unity that one cannot separate its ingredients except he wants wipe off its existnece and make it whithout existence.

An eloguence when it speaks of rebuke it pounces on the tongue of storm violently! And when it threatens spoil and spoilers it will explode into volcanoes having lights and sounds! And when it elaborates in a logic it will address minds and feelings, and locks every door or every proof except what it prooves expatiatly and when it calls for contemplation it associates the source of your senses and the origin of your thought, and so it drives you to what it wants and connects you with the cosmos fitly, and unifies in you the powers for discovery strongly.

And if it indulges you, you will recognize a father’s compassion, logic of paternity, truthfulness of human fidelity, and the heat of love that starts and does not end! As to when it speaks to you of the splendour of existence beauties of creation and perfections of the cosmos, it writes on your heart with an ink of the stars of sky!

It is an eloquence of the rhetoric, and a revelation of the revelation. It is an eloquence that connected with the roots of Arabic eloquence: what has been and will be, so that one, describing its autheor, said that his speech is under the Creator’s speech and above that of the created.

All Ali’s sermons exclude indications of personality as though their meanings and expressions are preoccupations of his psyche itself, and the events of his time which flames in his heart like fire burning in its stove under the blowing of the north wind. Hence he improvises the sermon with flowing sense, rich feeling, and a vigorous direction strikingly beautiful.

So were Ali’s improvised sayings: they are at the very strong manner that an improvised saying could be as for truthfulness, depth of thought, and technicality of expression so that the moment his lips utter them it went a proverb.

One of his improvised masterpieces is his saying to a man who praised him so much although he did not admire him: “I am below what you express and above what you feel in your heart”.

Likewise when he decided to do a great task by himself, where his companions hesitated and failed, they came to him, referring to the enemies, and said: “O’ Amiralmuamineen we save you them he said you cannot save me yourselves, so how can you save me others? Before me, people used to complain of the inequity of their rulers but now I complain of the inequity of my people; as if I am the led and they are the leaders”.

And when Muawiyah’s companions killed Mohammed bin Abi Bakr, and the news of his murder reached him, he said: “Our grief over him is in so much as their joy for it, as they have been lessened a hated and we have been lessened abeloved.

He was asked: which of the two is better: justice or generosity? He replied: Justice puts things in their places while generosity takes them out of their directions; justice is a general ruler while generosity is an accidental benefit. So, justice super-ior and better improvising, he said describing believer.

“A believer, his cheerfulness is in his face his sorrow is in his heart the most broad – chested (tolerant), and a very humble – hearted. He hates high position and detest reputation renown. His grief is long, his concern is far – reaching, his silence is much, and all time he is occupied. He is grateful and enduring, of bright demeanour, and of soft temperament!”

And an ignorant stubborn man asked him about a dilemma, at onece he replied: Ask me for understanding but do not ask me for obstinacy, because the ignorant person who tries to learn is like a learned man, but the learned arbitrary man is like the ignorant stubborn.

In summery Ali bin Abi Talib is a great literary man, grew up on experiencing life, on flexibility with the styles of eloquence, so he has owned what art requires: of originality in the autheor’s personality, And the special education in which personality grows and originality condenses.

As for language, our beloved Arabic language which Marshlosh , in the first volume of his book A Trip to the East, uttered this intelligent saying: “Arabic language is the richest, the most expressive, the most, and the most amiable in effect among other languages of the world. With the structures of its verbs, it follows the flight of thought and portraits it accurately; with the tunes of its sonic syllables it imitates the cries of animals, growling of escaping water, swarming of wind and bombing of thunder.”

As for this language, as Marshlosh mentioned its features and what he did not mention, you could find its origins and branches, the beauty of its colours and magic of its eloquence in Imam Ali’s literature.

It was a literature serving man and culture.

([^1]) Hasan Aon, trans; Theory of Zikrary Genve.