The language of quotation in Sufi prose, selected models

Abstract

Studies of Sufi prose are still scarce, compared to studies of poetry and prose in general. The intellectual, spiritual, cognitive, and literary components of the Sufi text, in addition to its symbolic mysteries, make it a text with limitless interpretive dimensions. The research dealt with the language of quotation as a literary term used by Sufis in their prose. It dealt with the arguments of the Qur’anic verses and the Prophet’s hadiths, an analytical rhetorical study, and concluded that Sufi prose relied heavily on quoting from the Qur’an and the hadiths, and that each writer had a special culture and linguistic school that he adopted and employed in guidance, preaching, and clarifying the topics of the Sufi experience. Their texts came in a single linguistic form and multiple meanings. The means of reasoning and persuasion in Sufi prose were numerous, and the arguments varied according to the recipient’s status and conditions, each according to his culture and intellectual and religious assumptions. All of this resulted in a diverse employment of persuasive arguments in the Sufi text. The aims sought by the Sufi prose writer were manifested in his wise or exhortatory text, and it had a set of purposes represented by argumentation, education, and morality. The interest of the Sufi prose writer differed in the type of argument that he employed in his prose text. Among the arguments that he paid great attention to was the argument of witness represented by religious witness (Qur’anic verses and the Noble Hadith).