Simile: Structure, Varieties, and Quality

While metaphor receives the most extended treatment in Asrar al-Balaghah, al-Jurjani's analysis of simile (tashbih) is also original and important. Simile is in some ways the simpler figure — it explicitly asserts resemblance rather than using the borrowed term directly — but al-Jurjani showed that its apparent simplicity conceals significant complexity, and that the principles governing excellent simile are as demanding as those governing excellent metaphor.

Al-Jurjani's analysis of simile begins with its grammatical structure. A simile has four components: the mushabbbah (the thing being compared), the mushabbbah bihi (the thing it is being compared to), the adat at-tashbih (the particle of comparison, like 'ka' meaning 'like' or 'as'), and the wajh ash-shabah (the point of resemblance, which may be stated or implied). Classical Arabic rhetoric taught these components as a standard classification, but al-Jurjani's interest was in how variations in the expression of these components create different aesthetic effects.

The most significant variation concerns the wajh ash-shabah — the point of resemblance. In explicit simile (tashbih mufassal), the point of resemblance is stated: 'Zayd is like a lion in his courage.' In condensed simile (tashbih mujmal), the point of resemblance is omitted: 'Zayd is like a lion.' Al-Jurjani argued that condensed simile was generally more powerful than explicit simile, and his analysis of why constitutes one of his most insightful contributions.

When the point of resemblance is omitted, the reader's mind is not directed to a single quality but instead activated to search for what the resemblance could be. This active mental engagement — the reader's imagination working to discover the point — creates deeper cognitive involvement and stronger aesthetic response. When the reader finds the answer (in the lion example: perhaps courage, perhaps ferocity, perhaps both), the discovery is pleasurable in a way that a pre-stated answer cannot be. The eloquence of condensed simile lies in what it leaves unsaid.

This analysis has important implications for understanding how classical Arabic poetry achieves its effects and for understanding why many Quranic comparisons — which consistently use condensed rather than explicit simile — are so powerful. Al-Jurjani's framework gives readers the tools to appreciate and analyze these effects with precision rather than simply responding to them intuitively.