Mehmed Chorûmî’s Treatise on Metaphor and Allegory

Abstract

“Language is waz‘and isti‘mâl” is a sentence frequently encountered in our classic texts. Despite the ease of identifying the difference between the waz, which gives truth to the meaning of a word, and isti’mâl, which gives metaphorical and allegorical meaning to it, the differences between metaphorical and allegorical meanings are still subject to many debates. Although these debates mostly persist in the discipline of rhetoric, they are also closely linked to the disciplines of tafsir, fıkh and hadith. The independent literature about metaphors and allegory in our scientific culture has been shaped in accordance with this and many scholars have written books and commentaries on this topic for a variety of reasons. In this study, we examine the work written upon the request of the students of Muhammad al-Chorûmî, whom we assume lived in the 18th century. This work is called Risâla fi al-farq bayna al-kinâya wa al-majâz and its content was analyzed and presented with the Turkish translation by scrutinizing the Arabic text. In his study, Chorumî followed the ideas of Miftâh al-ulûm, a text by Sakkâkî who had an important significance in Ottoman rhetoric disipline, and Talkhîs was overbuilt on this text by Qazwînî. He also followed Taftâzânî’s commentary, called Mutawwal about Talkhîs, and Sayyid Sharîf Jurjanî’s Hâshiya was compiled based on this commentary and on Qazwînî’s study on the disipline of rhetoric called al-Îdhâh. Chorûmî especially propounded the ideas and disagreements of these scholars about the topic, mentioning their reasons as well as their choices.