Compound Rhetorical Figures in Shams-I Qays Razi's Almu'jam and Ahmad Tarazi's Funun Ul-Balagha: A Comparative-Typological Study

The article compares compound (mushtarak) rhetorical figures in Shams-i Qays Razi's Persian treatise al-Mu'jam (1230s) and Aḥmad Ṭarazi's Funun al-balagha (1436–1437), the first comprehensive poetics in Turkic. Applying Ḥusaynī's later tripartite classification, six shared figures are identified: antithesis, congruence of images (mura'at al-naẓir), and the artful opening, transition, request and closing. Definitions, terms and illustrative verses are compared using comparative-historical and typological methods, and disputed readings are checked against the unique manuscript (Bodleian, MS Elliott 127). The substance of all six figures is interpreted identically, and the agreement on antithesis and congruence is typological rather than evidence of borrowing. The differences are systematic: Razi follows the Arabic tradition in terminology, treats the compositional figures as one cycle of the qasida and evaluates examples critically; Ṭarazi follows Vaṭvaṭ, lists the figures separately without evaluation and illustrates them with his own Turkic verses. The manuscript corrects two readings of the printed edition (naṣiḥ for fasiḥ; ʿaduvv-i shah for adadi shah) and shows that Ṭarazi's example of transition leads into praise of Ulugh Beg.