SOAS Research Online

Abstract

In Arabic and Persian rhetoric, laff wa-nashr or laff-u-nashr is a structuring device. It involves creating a one-to-one correspondence between two or more sets of words across verses or hemistiches of a poem. Laff wa-nashr was in use by the earliest Persian poets but only came to be named as such for the first time in Persian in the fourteenth century handbook of rhetorical figures Daqā’iq al-shiʿr (Minutia of Poetry) by Tāj al-Ḥalwā’ī, after the trope had gained currency in Arabic terminology by Arabic rhetoricians al-Sakkākī (d. 626/1229) and al-Qazwīnī. They used it as a rhetorical term in their analyses of the Qur’anic language. This working paper elaborates on laff-u-nashr in classical Persian handbooks of rhetorical figures, its typology, its development from another rhetorical figure, tafsīr, with translations from Rādūyānī, Waṭwāṭ, Shams-i Qays Rāzī, Tāj al-Ḥalvā’ī, Sharaf al-Dīn Rāmī, and Vāʾiẓ Kāshifī.