The Role of Khutbas and Letters in the Growth of Arabic Literature: A Literary Justification

Abstract

The two cornerstones of Arabic literary tradition were poetry, which constituted the imaginative substance of the Jahili Arabs, and prose, which eventually gained in stature and range from poetry and eventually surpassed it. The khutba (oration) and the risala (epistle) are amongst the earliest genres of Arabic prose. The present study looks at the two genres and their influence on the form of Arabic literature from the late Jahili period to the early Abbasid era. It suggests that the khutba provided rhetorical support for the development of classical Arabic eloquence (balagha), and the risala facilitated the growth of the calligraphic style of artful prose (al-nathr al-fanni) and the bureaucratic register of the Islamic state. The paper investigates a literary continuity that connects the orators of SuqUkaz, the sermons of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, and the secretarial letters of Abd al-Hamid al-Katib and Ibn al-Muqaffa, all based on Quranic pronouncements on bayan, prophetic traditions about eloquent speech, and authentic documents from the first few centuries of Islam. The results validate the conclusion that if these two types were not present, Arabic prose would have lacked both moral gravity and stylistic finesse.

Keywords: Khutba, Risala, Arabic prose, Balagha, Nahj al-Balagha, Abd al-Hamid al-Katib, Bayan, Arabic literary history.