The Rhetoric of Al-Hijjaj in Ibn Al-Rumi’s Ba’iyyah: " Da‘i al Lawma Inna al-Lawma ‘Awn al-Nawa’ib

Abstract

This paper examines the rhetorical analysis of Ibn al-Rumi's poem (Da‘i al-Lawma Inna al-Lawma ‘Awn al-Nawa’ib) "Let the blame go, blame helps the afflictions", where he uses his rhetorical, argumentative, and dialectical potential to construct a begging speech addressed to Abu al-Abbas Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Thawaba, head of the Diwan of Letters of some Abbasid caliphs to solicit his sympathy and induce him to give without the need for the poet to travel to Samarra. The research reveals Ibn Rumi's mechanisms in constructing his arguments, as he depends on various strategies, most notably begging, repetition, image inversion, and emotional urgency, and exploits the exaggerated depiction of his suffering to deepen the persuasive effect. He also combines logical and rhetorical techniques to enhance the effectiveness of his speech. The research follows the rhetorical argumentation approach, analyzing the strategies of persuasion and the use of rhetorical tools in the formation of arguments and their impact on the recipient. The research concludes that Ibn Rumi was able, through his elaborate argumentative structure, to construct a coherent begging discourse that skillfully employs rhetorical images and emotional appeals, revealing his deep awareness of the requirements of persuasion in the context of praise and begging, and emphasizing the role of rhetorical argumentation in shaping poetic discourse and achieving its communicative purposes. The research also recommends the necessity of pursuing argumentation studies in poetic texts, in search of different argumentation patterns and their rhetorical mechanisms, and the extent of their impact on the structure of the poem and its persuasive function in different literary contexts.