Saj'

Saj‘ (Arabic: سجع) is a form of rhymed prose characterized by its end-rhyme, accent-based meter, and parallelism.^[1] The parallelism could be of two types: iʿtidāl, meaning 'balance' or rhythmical parallelism, or muwāzana, referring to quantitative metrical parallelism.^[2] A single clause or phrase in saj' is can be called a sajʿah (pl. sajʿāt), or a faṣl (fuṣūl), or a fiqrah (pl. fiqar), or a qarīnah (pl. qarāʾin).^[3]

Saj' may have been the oldest form of artistic speech in Arabic, appearing already in pre-Islamic Arabia,^[4]^[5] and appears to have been the preferred medium of communication of the pre-Islamic kuhhān, i.e. the soothsayers.^[6] Saj' was also the dominant artistic speech in Abyssinia, both in the ecclesiastical poetry in Ge'ez and Old Amharic folk songs.^[7]

Saj' is known to be used in Arabic literature, both sacred like in the Quran^[8]^[9] and secular like in the One Thousand and One Nights.^[10] It can also be found in many instances of Persian literature, such as the Golestān of Saadi, written in 1258 CE. Saj' was occasionally adopted in attempts to mimic the style of the Quran.^[11]

Definition

According to Devin J. Stewart:^[12]

In its simplest form, sajʿ consists of groups of consecutive cola sharing a common rhyme and meter.

Stewart has also offered a more elaborate definition.^[13]

Sajʿ, though generally considered a sub-category of prose (nathr), is a type of composition distinct from both free prose (nathr mursal) and syllabic verse (naẓm). It consists of rhyming phrases termed sajaʿāt (sing sajʿah). The rules governing the rhyme in sajʿ are slightly different from those governing the rhyme in the qaṣīdah, the most noticeable difference being that the rhyme-words in sajʿ generally end in sukūn. Sajʿ conforms to an accentual meter: each sajʿah tends to have the same number of word-accents as its partner sajʿahs. Therefore, the fundamental unit of sajʿ prosody is the word, lafẓah (pl. Iafaẓāt), and not the syllable or the tafʿīlah.

Angelika Neuwirth has defined saj' as:^[14]

short units rhyming in frequently changing sound patterns reiterating the last consonant and based on a common rhythm

Description

In English, saj' is commonly just translated as "rhymed prose", but as a form of writing, involved additional rules (rarely explicated by Arab critics) beyond being that prose which rhymes.^[4] Traditionally, saj' has been defined as prose (nathr, manthūr) divided into phrases or clauses, each of which end in a common rhyme. The basis of saj' prosody is formed by the word rather than the syllable. As such, a mistaken or misunderstood way to describe saj' would be to try to describe it by a typical number of syllables per clause, as opposed to a typical number of words per clause.^[15] Saj' has an accentual meter, meaning that its meter is defined by the number of stressed syllables per line.^[16] The length of one clause or phrase (sajʿah) is equal or nearly equal in length to its partner clause, a property that has been called "balance" (iʿtidāl), and the number of words in a clause closely corresponds to its number of syntagmatic stresses (beats). Al-Bāqillānī defends the principle of balance in saj' against his interlocutors in the following manner:^[17]

One part of what they call sajʿ has segment endings close to each other and segment cuts near each other. The other part is stretched so that its segments can be twice as long as the preceding ones and a segment can return to the original measure (wazn) only after plenty of words. Such sajʿ is not good and does not deserve to be praised. Someone might say: "When the balanced sajʿ has been stated, it ceases to be sajʿ at all. The speaker is not obliged to make all his speech sajʿ. He can say something in sajʿ, then turn away from it, and then return to it once more." Our reply is: "When one of the hemistichs of a bayt is different from the other, it leads to disorder and imbalance. And it is exactly the same, when one of the hemistichs (miṣrāʿ) of a sajʿ utterance becomes disorganized and dissimilar to the other, as it also leads to imbalance." We have shown that the Arabs blame any sajʿ which deviates from the balance of parts (ajzāʾ) so that some of its hemistichs are made of two words, and others of many words; they consider this weakness not eloquence.

Another common feature of saj' writing, also found in the Quran, is the presence of an introductory formula to the rest of the text that does not itself follow the ordinary structure of saj'. The sajʿāt proper begin after the introductory phrase.^[18] In terms of length, Ibn al-Athir distinguished between short saj', where each clause has between two and ten words, with long saj', where each clause has eleven or more words, without any set limit. Ibn al-Athir produces an example containing nineteen words per clause (Quran 8:43–44). Zakariya al-Qazwini says that there are short, middle, and long forms of saj', but without specifying their boundaries, although unlike Ibn al-Athir, he does propose a limit to the number of words in long saj' (nineteen). For Al-Qalqashandi, since the Quran represented the height of literary elegance, he recommended against composing saj' any longer than nineteen words, which is the longest example of saj' found in the Quran. Medieval critics also typically preferred shorter versions of saj'.^[19]

In the Quran

Overview

The presence of saj' in the Quran has been a point of contention among Arabic literary critics, in large part tied to the potential implication that this characterization would have in conflating the Quran with human composition.^[20] Most believed that the Quran contained a significant amount of saj'^[21] or that the Quran, while it should not be described as saj' out of respect, has many of the formal features of saj'. Some theologians thought that some surahs were entirely written in saj', such as Surah 53 ("The Star"), Surah 54 ("The Moon"), and Surah 55 ("The Merciful"). The vast majority of examples of saj' found in Arabic manuals of rhetoric are derived from the Quran.^[20] Though much of the Quran does fit the criteria of saj', not all of it does. The saj' form is largely present in Meccan surahs, as opposed to Medinan surahs (although late Meccan surahs already begin to depart from this style^[22]). Meccan surahs contain monopartite verses, meaning that each verse is presented in one line. Medinans surahs, however, typically adopt bipartite verses, with two lines per verse, exceeding the constraints of shorter saj' phrases.^[23] Furthermore, unlike Meccan surahs, Medinan surahs have greatly unbalanced lines (even while maintaining end-rhyme). As such, while 86% of lines in the Quran feature end-rhymes (series of lines where the final word rhymes), less of this is saj', as some of them lack rhythmical parallelism. Likewise, some lines containing rhythmical parallelism do not feature end-rhymes.^[24] In one categorization, that of Ibn al-Athir, there are four main types of saj' in the Quran: equal saj' when both lines of a saj' unit are equal, unbalanced saj' when the second part of the saj' unit is longer than the first, short saj', and explicitly long saj'.^[25] Stewart has classified five main structural patterns of saj' units in the Quran.^[26] A more recent preliminary analysis, attempting to identify all categories of Quranic saj', has identified fifteen.^[27]

Perspectives in tradition

For Ibn Sinān al-Khafājī, the mode of Arabic in the Quran was consistent with existing custom and usage. On the other hand, those concerned with the doctrine of Quranic inimitability believed that saying saj' could be found in the Quran would muddy the distinction between the speech of God and that of humans. For example, Al-Baqillani (d. 1013 AD) in a work of his entitled Iʿjaz al-Qurʾān ("The Inimitability of the Quran"), went to great lengths to dispute that any of the Quran could be described as saj'. For some, the Quran was not saj' per se, although it was similar to saj'. Others argued that one should withhold from referring to the Quran as saj' merely out of respect for the Quran. Some proponents of the presence of saj' in the Quran solved this problem by creating a distinction between divine and human saj'.^[28] For example, Abu Hilal al-Askari argued:^[29]

Qur'anic discourse which assumes the form of sajʿ and izdiwāj is contrary to human discourse which assumes this form in its ability to convey the meaning, its clarity of expression, its sweetness and musicality.

In effect, al-Askari argued that unlike human saj', the Quran applies saj' and achieves the greatest possible elegance and meaning, even as it took on the literary limitations and formal constraints of saj'.^[28] For Ibn al-Athir, most of the Quran was saj', and it was only the need to be concise that prevented all of it from being composed in saj'.^[30]

The Arab critics also associated saj', to some extent, with the perceived nonsensical manner of speech attributed to soothsayers and diviners, which could not be associated with God or Muhammad. In this instance, an oft-cited tradition was the hadith of the fetus, where Muhammad appears to condemn the use of saj' when one participant of two factions in the midst of settling a dispute before him makes rhetorical use of the technique.^[28] According to some interpretations of this tradition, the condemnation was not on the use of saj' in general but was constrained to the use of saj' to rhetorically bolster an illegitimate point.^[31] Other prophetic traditions figured in these debates, involving both prohibitions of the use of saj' in the domain of prayer or examples of Muhammad using saj' in prayer.^[32]

References

Citations

^ Stewart 2006, p. 476–477, 481.
^ Stewart 2013, p. 25.
^ Stewart 1990, p. 113.
^ ^a ^b Stewart 1990, p. 101.
^ Stewart 2013, p. 27.
^ Stewart 2013, p. 22.
^ Brockelmann 2017, p. 23.
^ Stewart 1990, p. 108–109.
^ Deroche 2022, p. 29.
^ History of Muslim Philosophy, published by Pakistan Philosophical Congress online, Book 5, which is "A History of Muslim Philosophy: With Short Accounts of Other Disciplines and the Modern Renaissance in Muslim Lands" (1999) ISBN 817536145X
^ Sherman 2024, p. 59.
^ Stewart 2006, p. 476.
^ Stewart 1990, p. 132–133.
^ Neuwirth 2006, p. 251.
^ Stewart 1990, p. 111–116.
^ Stewart 2013, p. 27–30.
^ Frolov 2000, p. 115–117.
^ Stewart 1990, p. 116–118.
^ Stewart 1990, p. 118–120.
^ ^a ^b Stewart 2006, p. 477.
^ Stewart 1990, p. 133.
^ Stewart 2013, p. 58.
^ Neuwirth 2006, p. 251–252.
^ Stewart 2006, p. 477–478.
^ Klar 2021, p. 184–213.
^ Stewart 2006, p. 479–480.
^ Klar 2021, p. 223–225.
^ ^a ^b ^c Stewart 1990, p. 102–107.
^ Stewart 1990, p. 106.
^ Klar 2021, p. 181.
^ Stewart 2006b, p. 79.
^ Stewart 2013, p. 23–24.

Sources

Brockelmann, Carl (2017). History of the Arabic Written Tradition Supplement Volume 1. Translated by Lameer, Joep. Brill.
Deroche, Francois (2022). The One and the Many: The Early History of the Quran. Yale University Press.
Frolov, Dimitry (2000). Classical Arabic Verse: History and Theory of 'Arūḍ. Brill.
Klar, Marianna (2021). "A Preliminary Catalogue of Qurʾanic Sajʿ Techniques: Beat Patterning, Parallelism, and Rhyme". In Klar, Marianna (ed.). Structural Dividers in the Qur’an. Routledge. pp. 181–231.
Neuwirth, Angelika (2006). "Rhymed Prose". Encyclopaedia Of The Quran Vol 2. Brill. pp. 245–266.
Sherman, William (2024). "Finding the Qur'an in Imitation: Critical Mimesis from Musaylima to Finnegans Wake". ReOrient. 9 (1): 50–69.
Stewart, Devin (1990). "Sajʿ in the "Qurʾān": Prosody and Structure". Journal of Arabic Literature. 21 (2): 101–139. JSTOR 4183221.
Stewart, Devin (2006). "Rhymed Prose". Encyclopaedia Of The Quran Vol 4. Brill. pp. 476–484.
Stewart, Devin (2006b). "Soothsayer". Encyclopaedia Of The Quran Vol 5. Brill. pp. 78–80.
Stewart, Devin (2013). "Divine Epithets and the Dibacchius: Clausulae and Qur'anic Rhythm". Journal of Qur'anic Studies. 15 (2): 22–64.