al-Minhaj al-Wadih lil-Balagha
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- Editions
- al-Maktabah al-Azhariyyah lil-Turāth
al-Minhaj al-Wadih lil-Balagha (The Clear Path to Rhetoric) is an Arabic textbook on rhetoric (balagha) by the Egyptian scholar Hamid Awni, presenting the discipline's three classical branches—semantics (al-ma'ani), exposition (al-bayan), and embellishment (al-badi')—in a pedagogical format.
Background and Purpose
Awni composed the work as a manual for students in Islamic religious institutes affiliated with al-Azhar. In his introduction, he recounts that upon teaching rhetoric to secondary-level students, he found the existing curriculum texts excessively compressed and scattered across disparate topics, which caused students difficulty and led to frequent complaints. He therefore designed the book to organize the subject matter into accessible prose suited to modern Azhari instruction, gathering the dispersed elements of the syllabus while maintaining rigor. For senior secondary students, he structured the material to encompass the required discussions of Sa'd al-Din al-Taftazani alongside essential remarks from classical commentators.
Structure and Method
The book opens with an introductory survey on the history and development of rhetorical studies—tracing its milestones from early philological treatises like Abu Ubayda's Majaz al-Quran through the contributions of al-Jahiz, Ibn al-Mu'tazz, Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani, and Yusuf al-Sakkaki—followed by definitions and linguistic analyses of eloquence (fasaha) and rhetoric (balagha).
The body of the text is organized around the three classical rhetorical disciplines:
- Ilm al-Ma'ani (the science of semantic meanings and sentence syntax).
- Ilm al-Bayan (the science of figurative exposition, including simile, metaphor, and metonymy).
- Ilm al-Badi' (the science of rhetorical figures and stylistic embellishments).
Methodologically, Awni emphasizes debated rhetorical questions (al-masa'il al-mukhtalaf fiha) to clarify conceptual distinctions for students. He supplements classical citations with additional literary examples and concludes each instructional unit with exercises and practice tests, providing solutions for some while leaving others for student practice.
Publication
al-Minhaj al-Wadih lil-Balagha (also cited as al-Minhaj al-Wadih fi al-Balagha) was published in Cairo in two volumes in 1380 AH / 1960 CE. It has also been issued by al-Maktaba al-Azhariyya lil-Turath.
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