The effectiveness of rhetorical embellishment in Abbasid prose (discourse (Al-Hamadhani's Baghdad Maqama as a model)

Abstract

The Abbasid era, particularly in the fourth century AH, was marked by a qualitative leap in prose arts. Maqamat emerged as a prose literary genre that combined education and entertainment, relying on rhetorical devices as essential elements in shaping the identity of the prose text. Therefore, this research aims to study the manifestations and effectiveness of rhetorical devices in the Baghdadi Maqama by Badī' al-Zaman al-Hamadhānī, and how they are employed to achieve aesthetic, narrative, and semantic goals.

The study focused on analyzing the functions (aesthetic, semantic, and syntactic) of rhetorical devices in the Baghdadi Maqama. The research concluded that al-Hamadhānī succeeded in employing these devices as effective tools to serve meaning and narrative, rather than merely as ornamentation or verbal embellishments. Furthermore, the study highlights how these devices transformed the Baghdadi Maqama from a simple narrative into an artistic masterpiece that reflected the complexities of Abbasid society, making it a pioneering model of prose art during that era.