Arabic Rhetoric as Divine Hermeneutics: mathal and majāz in Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān

Abstract I read Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān , a sixth/twelfth-century philosophical narrative, through the lens of two critical terms in Arabic rhetoric: mathal and majāz , loosely equivalent to metaphor and figurative speech. Foregrounding the hermeneutic principles underlying the two concepts allows us to explore the affective and aesthetic means by which knowledge of the divine can be transmitted even through the material limitations of human language. They also provide the epistemological and rhetorical conditions for relating the sensible ( maḥsūs ) and intelligible ( maʿqūl ) worlds to each other through repeated crossings that connect divine truth ( ḥaqq ) with the material conditions of living. By his fractal-like deployment of mathal and majāz , Ibn Ṭufayl brings vividly to life a method of reading that enjoins us to interpret our material world in light of the wider cosmos in the same way that we encounter his text, preparing us to reach for an ever-receding gnosis.