Qur’anic Metaphors: Between the Historicity of Poetic Imagination and the Continuity of Context

Abstract

Due to their contextual breadth and hermeneutic continuities, Qur’anic metaphors are held to be manifestations of Qur’anic iʿjāz that outshine the metaphors and imagery found in pre-Islamic poetry: they transcend temporal and spatial limits and are accessible to all languages and cultures. The historicity of metaphors and rhetorical images that characterise the Arabic poetic heritage is contextualised by their location within the temporal and spatial regions in which they were produced, the conceptual connections to which have been lost due to changing cultural beliefs, ideas, and contexts. In contrast, Qur’anic rhetoric has enduring continuity due to its observance of similarities in the construction of its metaphors, as well as the fact these are revealed within a religious, legislative text, whose contexts enjoy a rich continuity that encompasses meaning and connotations that accommodate the knowledge paradigms of different cultures.