Name Abd al-Jurjani Role Critic | Died 1078 | |
Full name Abu Bakr Abd al-Qahir bin Abd ar-Rahman bin Muhammad al-Jurjani Major works al Maghna fi Sharh al-Idah | ||
Main interests Literary theory, Grammar | ||
Abu Bakr Abd al-Qāhir bin Abd ar-Rahman bin Muhammad al-Jurjānī (400 – 471 or 474 A.H.) (died 1078 AD) was a renowned Persian scholar of the Arabic language, literary theorist, grammarian and Shafi'i Muslim. al-Jurjānī was an Ahsa'ari descendant, and born in the town of Gorgan in Iran.
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al-Jurjānī is said not to have left his home town of Gorgan all his life, yet his reputation reached many Arabic scholars who came to see him. He excelled in the two sciences of ilm al balaghah (eloquence and rhetorical art) and ilm al bayan (a branch of Arabic rhetoric dealing with metaphorical language), which he explained in his two books Asrar al Balaghah (Secrets of Rheotric), and Dala'il al-Ijaz (Intimations of Inimitability). Al-Jurjānī was influenced by his predecessors such as the grammarian Sibawayh, the critic Abi Helal al-'Askari al Balaghi, and the linguist and literary theorist Abu Ali al-Farisi, known for his book al-Idah (Elucidation).
Ali al-Farisi's nephew, Abi al-Hussein Muhammad Bin al-Hassan Bin Abd al-Wareth al-Faressi al-Nawawi, was al-Jurjānī's teacher, and taught al-Jurjānī the al-Idah. Later al-Jurjānī was to write a thirty-volume work of commentary on al-Idah entitled al Maghna fi Sharh al-Idah .
In modern critical opinion
In his volume Asrar al-Balaghah, Muhammad Abdul Mun'em Khafagi writes "the Swiss linguist Saussure's theory of deconstruction is preceded by Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī’s theory of deconstruction". Also, in the introduction of Muhammad Abdul Muttaleb's book Issues of Modernism in the Works of Abd-al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī, Muttaleb writes of al-Jurjānī and Noam Chomsky "there is a similarity between these two men".