Narrative Discourse and its Rhetorical Techniques in the Holy Quran (The Story of Solomon as a Model)

Abstract

The passion for the beauty of Quranic stories and the uniqueness of its eloquence in presenting them has remained constant since childhood;  so whenever I read a study about it, I looked forward to adding to it from a new perspective, until I noticed that there are special rhetorical techniques in the rhetorical narrative discourse in the story of Solomon, from a casual narrative to an extended one, and from a discontinuous narrative to a continuous, consecutive one, and from a discontinuous narrative to another alternating one, and each has its role and techniques in the rhetoric of the narrative discourse in the story throughout its duration in the Surahs of the Holy Quran. Thus, I found this particular discourse worthy of an independent study, along with all the critical and religious studies I found about the story. However, these were dominated by the stereotyping of the story and the preoccupation with the cosmic miracles and the wondrous and missionary dimensions in it, at the level of literary and Islamic studies.  Therefore, I studied the patterns of narrative discourse in independent chapters to reach valid answers to multiple and different questions; including: did the narrative discourse and its rhetorical techniques differ in the story of Solomon? What are the characteristics of this difference? How did it differ? Why? And what is the result of that?

Then,  believing in the difference between the Quranic narration and its specificity, which is only known through careful study, from the human narration, whose vision is determined according to previously known rules, I arrived at a set of results through a structural semiotic study of the rhetorical discourse of storytelling; including: that the rhetorical techniques of narration of the Quranic discourse are distinguished by the ability to probe the souls of creatures and expose them in the worlds of the unseen and the seen;  The technique of incidental narration deals with stories that branch off from the main story, and each story comes separate from the others, connected to the main event of the story. Moreover, Short narratives are characterized by brevity and generality, which refers to the entire story. Also, the extended narrative comes to include several angles in the story; therefore, the patterns of narration varied.  While the sequential narration takes into account the order, the discontinuous narration does not, and the alternation pattern combines the sequence, the exit, and then the return to the main line of the story.

The Qur’anic context alternates between the symbolic narration and its descriptive counterpart, which doubles the escalation and revolution of events, and all these mechanisms are conveyed to the recipient through the techniques of narrative discourse that distinguish this story.