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Saj' (Arabic: سجع, romanized: sajʿ) is a form of rhymed prose defined by its relationship to and use of end-rhyme, meter, and parallelism.[1] There are two types of parallelism in saj': iʿtidāl (rhythmical parallelism, meaning "balance") and muwāzana (qualitative metrical parallelism).[2]
Saj' was the earliest artistic speech in Arabic.[3][4] It could be found in pre-Islamic Arabia among the kuhhān (the pre-Islamic soothsayers)[5] and in Abyssinia for ecclesiastical poetry and folk songs.[6] One famous composer of saj' was said to have been the bishop of Najran, Quss Ibn Sa'ida al-Iyadi.[7]
Saj' continued in Islamic-era Arabic literature and speech. The stylistic similarities between saj' and the Quran have long been a matter of discussion[8][9] especially between saj' and the style of the earliest surahs.[10] In Umayyad times, saj' was discredited as an artistic style for resembling the speech of soothsayers. This, however, did not stop people from composing saj'. Saj' in the style of pre-Islamic Arabia was still being written in Abbasid times, and was being invoked in the same situations, like in speeches before battle, the cursing of one's killers before their own death, derision, and argument. Saj' was attributed to Muhammad's companions, like Abu Bakr, and prominent figures in early Islamic history, like Ibn al-Zubayr and Al-Hajjaj. After the image of saj' had been rehabilitated, in large part thanks to the effort of Al-Jahiz, it became a major form of Arabic literary prose and was used in genres like the maqāma. To this day, saj' continues to be used by peasants and bedouin.[11] Saj' appears in many famous works, including the One Thousand and One Nights.[12] It also became popular in Persian literature, like in the Golestān of Saadi. Saj' was used by Quran exegetes[13] and in texts that attempt to imitate the style of the Quran.[14]
- ^ Stewart 2006, p. 476–477, 481.
- ^ Stewart 2013, p. 25.
- ^ Stewart 1990, p. 101.
- ^ Stewart 2013, p. 27.
- ^ Stewart 2013, p. 22.
- ^ Brockelmann 2017, p. 23.
- ^ Dadoo 2016, p. 709–710.
- ^ Stewart 1990, p. 108–109.
- ^ Deroche 2022, p. 29.
- ^ Beeston 1973, p. 143.
- ^ Frolov 2000, p. 109–110.
- ^ Stanton, Anna Ziajka (2023), "Vulgarity of Sajʿ: The Scandalous Pleasures of Burton's The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night", The Worlding of Arabic Literature, Language, Affect, and the Ethics of Translatability (1 ed.), Fordham University Press, pp. 56–82, doi:10.2307/jj.1176747.6, retrieved 2025-01-05
- ^ Stewart 2024, p. 21–22.
- ^ Sherman 2024, p. 59.