Sharh Bayt wa Manahu - Dimna Athar al-Muallimi
- Author died
- 1386 AH
- Editions
- Dār ‘Ālam al-Fawā’id lil-Nashr wal-Tawzī‘
Sharh Bayt wa-Ma'nahu (Arabic: شرح بيت ومعناه, lit. 'Explanation of a Verse and Its Meaning') is a short rhetorical treatise by the Yemeni scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Mu'allimi al-Yamani (1313–1386 AH / 1895–1966 CE), published within the philological volume of his collected works (Athar al-Mu'allimi) .
Subject and Content
The treatise offers a concise rhetorical and grammatical commentary on a single line of verse composed by a contemporary man of letters, Thabit ibn Sa'id Mu'awwad, a resident of the 'Utmah district in Yemen . The poet structured the line to encode the Hijri year 1332 (1913–1914 CE) using the alphanumeric abjad calculation (hisab al-jummal) :
Ta'rīkhu hādhā al-ʿāmi yā ʿam ... azāla ʿanka al-hamma wa-l-gham
(The date of this year, O uncle ... has removed worry and grief from you)
Al-Mu'allimi analyzes the verbal and stylistic merits (al-mahasin al-lafziyya) present in the line, highlighting that they arose naturally without forcedness or artificiality, which he observes is rare in chronogrammatic verse because such poetry is predominantly plagued by weakness in phrasing and meaning .
Rhetorical and Grammatical Analysis
In his commentary, al-Mu'allimi identifies several rhetorical devices (badi'), as well as stylistic and grammatical points:
- Quasi-derivative paronomasia (jinas shibh al-mushtaq): Occurring between the words al-'am (العَم, the uncle) and al-'am (العام, the year) .
- Orthographic paronomasia (jinas al-tashif): Found between al-'am (العَم) and al-gham (الغَم, grief) .
- Adjacent paronomasia (jinas al-mudara'): Occurring between al-ham (الهَم, worry) and al-gham (الغَم, grief) .
- Composition and tone: He notes the excellence of the verse's phrasing (husn al-sabk), along with its courteous address and supplication .
- Grammatical parsing: He comments on the elided grammatical agent (al-fa'il) in the clause azala 'anka (أزال عنك, has removed from you), explaining that the subject is omitted because it is known from the context, as none removes grief and distress except Allah the Exalted .
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