Khutbat Wasil ibn Ata - ضمن Nawadir al-Makhtutat
- Author died
- 131 AH
- Editions
- Sharikat Maktabat wa-Maṭbaʿat Muṣṭafá al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī wa-Awlāduh bi-Miṣr
Khutbat Wasil ibn Ata (The Oration of Wasil ibn Ata) is a classical Arabic lipogrammatic sermon delivered by the early theologian Wasil ibn Ata (80–131 AH / 700–748 CE), celebrated for entirely avoiding the Arabic letter rā' (r) . The critical edition of the complete text, along with a scholarly study, was published by the Egyptian philologist Abd al-Salam Harun in the first volume of his series Nawadir al-Makhtutat (Rare Manuscripts) .
Context and Composition
Wasil ibn Ata, the prominent figure associated with the origins of the Mu'tazilite theological school, had a pronounced lisp (lathghah) that caused him to pronounce the letter rā' as a ghayn . To mask this speech impediment, he drew upon his extensive command of the Arabic language to systematically substitute words containing rā' with synonyms that lacked it .
The oration was delivered at an assembly in Iraq convened by its governor, Abdullah ibn Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz . At this gathering, prominent orators of the era—Khalid ibn Safwan, Shabib ibn Shayba, and al-Fadl ibn Isa—preceded him with carefully prepared and ornate addresses . Wasil then rose and delivered an extended, spontaneous oration without uttering a single rā', surpassing the other speakers in length and eloquence, which prompted the governor to double Wasil's financial award relative to the others .
Transmission and Structure
The oration attained wide renown in classical Arabic literary history and was recorded among Wasil's works under titles such as Kitab Khutbat Wasil or Khutbatuhu allati akhraja minha al-ra' . The bibliographer Ibn al-Nadim (d. 385 AH) documented it among the transmissions of Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Muhammad al-Mada'ini .
The text opens with an ornate theological prologue praising God:
"الحمد للّه القديم بلا غاية، والباقي بلا نهاية، الذي علا في دنوّه، ودنا في عُلوّه، فلا يحويه زمان، ولا يحيط به مكان..." "Praise be to God, the Eternal without limit, the Everlasting without end, Who is exalted in His closeness and near in His highness, Whom no time contains and no place encompasses..."
The oration maintains thematic elements of divine unity, justice, and moral exhortation while consistently circumventing the letter rā' through stylistic circumlocutions and careful lexical selection .
Manuscripts and Publication
Prior to its scholarly edition, the text circulated in print only in defective and incomplete forms, including printings in Ahmad Miftah's Miftah al-Afkar (1314 AH) and Adabiyyat al-Lugha al-Arabiyya (1906 CE), which Ahmad Zaki Safwat relied upon when compiling Jamharat Khutab al-Arab .
While editing al-Jahiz's al-Bayan wa-l-Tabyin, Abd al-Salam Harun located an appended folio at the end of the Feyzullah manuscript (MS 1580) preserved in Istanbul and photographed by the Institute of Arabic Manuscripts . That copy was transcribed in 587 AH by Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Lakhmi and read before Abu Dharr al-Khushani . Other known manuscript copies exist in libraries in Istanbul and Mosul .
Harun published the full, verified text with an extensive introductory study on Wasil, his eloquence, and the historical circumstances of the speech in the treatise collection Nawadir al-Makhtutat (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanji, 1951, vol. 1, pp. 117–136) .
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