A stylistic study of the book of Enjoyment and Companionship by Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi

Abstract

This research paper presents a stylistic study of the prose text in the first night of the Book of Enjoyment and Companionship by Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi (310-414 AH), focusing on his dialogue with the minister Abu Abdullah al-Aridh (Ibn Saadoun). Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi is considered one of the luminaries of the fourth century AH, a century that witnessed the emergence of several factors and motivations that changed intellectual and literary life, awakened minds that were dominated by the drowsiness of tradition, and pushed them towards a stage of creativity and renewal, to the point that it was called the Renaissance in Islam. The study extracts the musical level from the external rhythm, such as the musical balance between phrases, saj', and janas, and the compositional level represented by the grammatical and rhetorical level in those hidden meanings and subtleties of sayings and linguistic and intellectual formulations in his sentences that represent his literary era. Texts were taken from the dialogue and then explained linguistically and conceptually from different literary angles. From this research, we conclude that Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi had an unprecedented interest in the subjects of reason, philosophy, and literature, to the point that he was accused of heresy. He would write words, carefully considering the ease of their meaning, the depth of the idea, the wisdom, and the musical balance created by the interplay of alliteration, simile, and metaphor. The expressive techniques he employed to achieve his goals were rich in the beauty of word and meaning. However, despite all this, he used the style of flattery and appeasement in order to obtain money due to his harsh material circumstances.