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Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān / Simile
- Article Table of Contents
- Uses and examples
- Commentators on simile
- Bibliography
The comparison of two things, made explicit — and distinguished from metaphor (q.v.) — by the use of “like” or “as.” “Zayd fought like a lion” is a simile. In Arabic rhetoric (see arabic language; rhetoric and the qurʾān; literary structures of the qurʾān), “simile” or tashbīh has the same general sense, and the same general distinction is made between simile and metaphor (istiʿāra). The “like” or “as” in the simile is usually made with the particle ka, though a locution using the noun mathal may substitute. Early works on rhetoric placed great emphasis on simile; al-Marzubānī (d. 384/994) in al-Muwashsha made simile one of the “four pillars of poetry” (see van Gelder, Tashbīh; see poetry and poets).¶ Not surprisingly, proponents of the doctrine of the inimitability (q.v.) of the Qurʾān, like al-Rummānī (d. 384/994) and al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), listed its excellent similes among the rhetorical qualities that make it inimitable. Al-Bāqillānī (Iʿjāz, 263-8) compared them favorably with the outstanding similes found in poets like Imruʾ al-Qays and Bashshār b. Burd. From a rhetorical standpoint, the interest in qurʾānic simile culminates in the work of Ibn Nāqiyā (d. 485/1092) entitled al-Jumān fī tashbīhāt al-Qurʾān.
Although similes are common in the Qurʾān, the wordtashbīh is not found there. The term mathal, however, sometimes clearly means “simile.” At the same time, it must be said that mathal is also used to mean short narrative passages that we would be more likely to call “parables,” and it seems no clear distinction is made between these two forms by the Qurʾān, nor, for that matter, by some of the rhetoricians (see parable). They are taken to be the same sort of rhetorical device, mathal. Perhaps that word is best rendered by the similarly comprehensive term “analogy.” Two passages show this. In q 56:22-3 the plural form, amthāl, introduces a simile: “The houris (q.v.) whose eyes are like hidden pearls” (wa-ḥūrun ʿīnun ka-amthāli l-luʾluʾi l-maknūni), whereas q 18:32-45, which is also termed a mathal, clearly exceeds the bounds of what is usually called simile: “Coin for them an analogy (wa-ḍrib lahum mathalan) of two men, unto one of whom we had assigned two gardens of grapes and we had surrounded both with date-palms and put between them tillage (see garden; date palm; agriculture and vegetation)….” It goes on to relate a parable about two farmers, one pious, the other disdainful and proud; as one would expect, the former is rewarded and the latter punished (see reward and punishment; pride; insolence and obstinacy; piety).¶
- Uses and examples
In the Qurʾān the simile is often made simply with ka: q 7:179 “Those are like cattle” (ūlāʾika ka-l- anʿām) but quite commonly a qurʾānic simile is made with a characteristic pleonasm, ka- mathal. As Ibn Nāqiyā shows through numerous examples, qurʾānic similes make use of the same imagery found in Arabic poetry, both pre-Islamic and later (see symbolic imagery). The first simile (q 2:17), using the pleonasm ka-mathal, compares the hypocrites (q.v.; al- munāfiqūn; see hypocrites and hypocrisy) to someone who blunders in the dark (see darkness) after having briefly enjoyed the light (q.v.) of a fire (q.v.): “Their likeness is the likeness of one who lit a fire (mathaluhum ka-mathali lladhī istawqada nāran), and when it illuminated his surroundings, God took away their fire and left them in darkness. They do not see (see vision and blindness).” This simile is soon followed by another: “Or like the rain clouds in the sky with darkness and thunder and lightning in it (see weather), they put their fingers in their ears against the thunderbolts” (q 2:19; see hearing and deafness; seeing and hearing).
Aspects of God's creation (q.v.) provoke a number of similes. q 36:39, “And for the moon (q.v.) we have devised stations until it returns like an old, withered palm stalk,” i.e. curved and small; q 55:14, “He created man from clay (q.v.) like crockery”; q 55:24, “His are ships (q.v.) that sail on the sea like mountains.” Heaven and hell (see hell and hellfire) are the subject of colorful similes. The houris of paradise (q.v.), for example, are described thus: “And with them are ones who lower their eyes, pure as the hidden eggs [of ostriches]” (q 37:48-9). Likewise, the painful features of hell are also described through similes. The liquid given to the damned is like molten lead (see food and drink ; hot and cold): q 18:29 “And if they call for help, they will be given water like molten lead scalding their faces, an evil drink.”¶
A fairly limited number of peoples, places and events probably account for most of the similes in the Qurʾān. Recourse to simile is especially frequent in the case of various “enemies (q.v.) of God” (aʿdāʾ Allāh), most prominently the unbelievers (al- kāfirūn; see belief and unbelief; gratitude and ingratitude), the polytheists (al- mushrikūn; see polytheism and atheism) and the aforementioned hypocrites. q 7:176 compares an unbeliever to a dog (q.v.): “He is like the dog, if you chase him away, he pants, and if you leave him alone, he pants.” Two memorable similes compare the futile acts of unbelievers to ashes (q.v.) and to a mirage (see also transitoriness). q 14:18: “Those who disbelieve in their lord (q.v.), their deeds are like ashes which the winds blow on a stormy day” (see good deeds; evil deeds). And q 24:39: “Those who disbelieve, their deeds are like a mirage in a desert. Someone thirsty reckons it to be water (q.v.) until he reaches it and finds nothing in it.”
q 13:14 tells us that the polytheist who prays to idols (see idols and images) is “like a man who stretches his hands to water for the water to come to it, but the water does not come.” q 29:41 compares the refuge the polytheist seeks in his idols to a spider (q.v.) web: “Those who take other protectors besides God (see clients and clientage; protection) are like the spider who takes a house — truly the spider's house is the flimsiest of houses!” q 63:4 compares the hypocrites to blocks of wood: “And when you see them, their persons please you, and if they speak you listen to what they say. [Yet] they are like blocks of wood propped against each other.” ¶ Two particular events, judgment day (see last judgment) and the destruction of wicked peoples (see punishment stories; chastisement and punishment), are frequent subjects of similes, e.g. the annihilation of the people of ʿĀd (q.v.) in q 54:19-20: “We sent upon them a roaring wind (see air and wind) on a day of unrelenting calamity which snatched them away as though they were the trunks of uprooted palm trees.” q 69:7 says that the same people after their destruction seemed “as though they were the hollow trunks of palm trees.” q 55:37 describes the appearance of the sky on judgment day (see apocalypse): “And when the skies are split open, they will be red like stained leather.” q 70:8-9 has: “A day when the sky will be like molten brass and the mountains will be like tufts of wool.” q 101:4 describes the commotion of the resurrected people (see resurrection) thus: “…a day when the people will be like moths scattered about.”
In sum, similes vary greatly in tone, some are majestic, some homespun — as q 2:26 says, “God does not disdain to make a similitude of a gnat” (inna llāha lā yastaḥyi an yaḍriba mathalan mā baʿūḍatan). Sometimes a sardonic tone is struck (see language and style of the qurʾān). A memorable simile in q 62:5 concerns Jews (see jews and judaism) and the Torah (q.v.): “The likeness of those who were given the Torah to carry and then ignored it is that of a donkey carrying books (asfār).”
In addition to their illustrative, semantic role, similes often seem to have a rhetorical, emphatic role in the organization of qurʾānic discourse. Similes not infrequently open or close a subsection of a sūra (q.v.; see also form and structure of the qurʾān). For example, the rather ordinary simile in q 11:24 which compares believers and unbelievers to the seeing and the blind, respectively, is followed immediately by stories of the prophets (see prophets and prophethood) Noah (q.v.), Hūd (q.v.) and Ṣāliḥ (q.v.), and the “vanished peoples” to whom they were sent — the heedless people whom God destroyed.¶ Similarly, the famous or infamous comparison of Torah-bearers just cited, q 62:5, introduces a discussion of the Jews. The similes in q 54:20, 57:20, 69:7 and 105:5 offer tart summations of the preceding passages.
The Qurʾān, in its characteristically self-conscious way, tells us that the simile is one of God's favored rhetorical devices for educating people (see knowledge and learning; teaching; intellect): wa-la-qad ṣarrafnā fī hādhā l-qurʾāni lil-nāsi min kulli mathalin, “We have put in this Qurʾān every sort of similitude for people” (q 18:54) and wa-la-qad ḍarabnā lil-nāsi fī hādhā l-qurʾāni min kulli mathalin laʿallahum yatadhakkarūna, “We have coined for people in this Qurʾān every kind of similitude. Perhaps they will take heed” (q 39:27; see warning). Indeed, the Qurʾān even goes so far as to use simile to comment on simile/analogy itself. Interestingly enough, the chief characteristic of good rhetoric is stability, that of bad rhetoric instability:
Have you not seen how God has made an analogy? A good word is like a good tree (see trees). Its roots are firm and its branches are in heaven. It gives its fruit in every season with its lord's permission. God coins similes for people that they may reflect. The analogy of a bad word is with a bad tree, uprooted from the earth, possessing no stability (q 14:24-6).
- Commentators on simile
Commentators devote considerable attention to these and other similes (see exegesis of the qurʾān: classical and medieval).¶ Often their concern is simply to elucidate the obscurity of the simile. For example, in q 2:17 it is the free mixture of singular and plural pronouns referring to the same party; while in q 2:19 the entire basis of the simile seems at first confused since, as one reads, it becomes apparent that the hypocrites are not being compared to the rain clouds, despite ka- ṣayyib, but rather to people frightened by a thunderstorm.
As might be expected, commentators, depending on their outlook and interests, offer a wide range of interpretations of such similes. To take the example of q 14:24-6 cited above, al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) says, “Interpreters differ on the meaning of ‘a good word’ (kalima ṭayyiba). Some of them say it is the faith (q.v.) of the believer” (Tafsīr, xiii, 135; see also speech; word of god). He goes on to say that some specifically equate it with the shahādat lā illāha illā llāh, it being firm (thābit), meaning the shahāda is firmly fixed in the heart of the believer (see witness to faith). A very early exegete, Mujāhid (d. 104/722), tells us that the good tree is a date palm. Others say a good word means the believer himself who is on earth (q.v.) and who works and speaks on earth and so his deeds and his speech reach heaven while he is still on earth. Yet others say the tree in this simile is a tree in heaven but al-Ṭabarī considers it more likely to be a date palm.
Al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144), a Muʿtazilī (see muʿtazila), tells us that “good word” means the word tawḥīd, the oneness and unity of God (see god and his attributes). Al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), who rejects the necessity of the tree being a date palm, devotes four and a half pages to explicating the “tree” and its four attributes, its goodness, its firm roots, its lofty branches, and its constant supply of fruit.¶
On the other hand, we learn from the Shīʿī commentary of al-Kāshī (d. ca. 910/ 1505) that the imām (q.v.) Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765) said of the good tree: “The Messenger of God is its root, the Prince of the Believers (ʿAlī) is its trunk, the imāms among the descendants of both are its branches, the knowledge of the imāms constitutes its fruit” (Gätje, Qurʾān, 243). Not surprisingly, al-Kāshī tells us that the bad tree is the Umayyads (see shīʿism and the qurʾān; politics and the qurʾān; ʿalī b. abī ṭālib).
Two other similes also address the topic of figurative language in the Qurʾān. The first is q 2:26, mentioned above, “Verily, God does not disdain to make an analogy with a gnat…” This al-Rāzī tells us is meant as a rebuke to the unbelievers who had falsely claimed that mention of such humble creatures as the bee, the fly, the spider and the ant was unworthy of divine discourse (see animal life). Wrong, al-Rāzī says, because God has created both great and humble things,
and the little weighs upon him no less than the big, and the great is no more difficult for him than the small… and it is perfectly apposite to mention flies when God wishes to show how ugly is the polytheists' worship of idols… or to make an analogy with a spider web in order to show how trifling and flimsy their religion is (Rāzī, Tafsīr, ii, 134-5).
The other simile, in q 13:17, is yet more complicated since it encloses one simile within another:
He sent down water from the sky and the river beds (awdiya) flowed with it. But the flood carried away the scum floating on its surface — and like it is the scum which comes from that which they heat with fire seeking to make jewelry and tools — likewise, God shows what is true and what is false.¶ The scum is cast away with distaste, while what benefits people remains on this earth.
Al-Ṭabarī writes that this is an analogy that God makes with truth (q.v.) and falsehood (see astray; ignorance; lie), with faith (q.v.) and unbelief. God is saying that the similarity of the truth in its permanence and of error (q.v.) in its evanescence is like the water which God sends down from the sky to the earth. The wādīs flow with it, the large ones with large quantities and the small ones with small quantities. The flood carries a swelling scum or foam, and this is one of two analogies pertaining to truth and falsehood. The truth is like the water (q.v.) which remains and which God has sent, while the foam which is of no benefit is falsehood. The other analogy — “and like it is the scum which comes from that which they heat with fire seeking to make jewelry and tools” — is the analogy of truth and falsehood with gold (q.v.) and silver and brass and lead and iron (see metals and minerals) from which people obtain benefits (see grace; blessing), while falsehood is like the scum which goes away without being of any benefit while the pure gold and silver remain. Likewise, God compares faith and unbelief, the futility of unbelief and the failure of the unbeliever being a punishment, while faith is that with lasting benefit (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, xiii, 90). Al-Rāzī sharpens the analogy making the rain the Qurʾān and the wādīs the hearts of believers (see heart), which according to their capacities contain more or less of the truth, while the foam and scum that are carried away and vanish are the doubts and obscurities (see uncertainty) that will vanish in the hereafter when only the truth will remain (Rāzī, Tafsīr, xix, 34-5; see also pairs and pairing).¶
Probably the most well-known qurʾānic simile, and also one of the most commented on, is the so-called Light Verse (q 24:35). This verse begins with a metaphor, “God is the light (q.v.) of heaven (see heavens and sky; planets and stars) and earth,” but then quickly switches to simile,
the likeness of his light is like a niche which holds a lamp (q.v.). The lamp is in a glass which shines like a pearl-like star. It is kindled from a blessed tree, an olive neither of the east nor the west whose oil would almost glow forth itself though no fire touched it. Light upon light. God guides to his light whom he wills. God makes analogies for people. God knows all things.
Al-Ṭabarī, al-Zamakhsharī and al-Rāzī devote considerable space to mapping out the various parts of this elaborate simile, and al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) writes an entire book about it, Mishkāt al-anwār, drawing an analogy between the five elements of the simile: the niche, the glass, the lamp, the tree and the oil, and the senses, the imagination, the intellect, language, and prophecy. (For more on these interpretations, see metaphor .)
Similes, with the uncertainties of interpretation, could also be the topics of theological debate (see theology and the qurʾān). One such exchange took place between the governor of Baghdād and Ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855) during the inquisition (q.v.; miḥna) on the issue of the createdness of the Qurʾān (q.v.):
Governor: Does not God say, ‘We have made it an Arabic (see arabic language) Qurʾān’ (q 43:3). How could it be made without being created? ¶
Ibn Ḥanbal: But God says, ‘and He made them like green blades devoured…’ (q 105:5; see grasses). Does that mean He created them [like green blades devoured]? (Cook, Koran, 110).
More broadly, it can be said that just as there are theological dimensions to metaphor — whence the hasty insistence of commentators to assure us that “God is the light” must be understood as meaning “He is the possessor of light” (Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, ad q 24:35) — even so the simile has theological dimensions. For the notion of similitude in relation to God must also be placed in the context of the Qurʾān's insistence on the absolute oneness and uniqueness of God and the impossibility of likening anyone or anything to him (see anthropomorphism). Thus, q 42:11, laysa ka- mithlihi shayʾ, “There is nothing like him.” In this context, it can be seen that similitude is a definitive notion in the qurʾānic universe; similitude is a common quality of God's creation but since similarity requires at least two objects, similitude is a quality that is found only in his creation. This is reflected in theological debate about anthropomorphism in which the opposed terms tashbīh/ tanzīh are employed. In such debates tashbīh is the negative term which denotes anthropomorphism.
- Bibliography
- Primary
Bāqillānī, Iʿjāz
al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, Mishkāt al-anwār, Cairo 1964
trans. W.H.T. Gairdner, al-Ghazzali's Mishkāt al-Anwār, Lahore 1952
Ibn Nāqiyā, Abū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Bāqī b. Muḥammad, al-Jumān fī l-tashbīhāt al-Qurʾān, Alexandria 1974
Rāzī, Tafsīr, Beirut 1981
Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, Cairo 1987
Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, Beirut 1995
- Secondary
M. Cook, The Koran. A very short introduction, Oxford 2000
H. Gätje, The Qurʾān and its exegesis, trans. A.T. Welch, London 1976
G.J.H. van Gelder, Tashbīh (a), in ei2, x, 341
Pickthall, Koran
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