| Asas al-Balagha | |
| Title Orig: | أساس البلاغة |
| Orig Lang Code: | ar |
| Author: | Al-Zamakhshari |
| Language: | Arabic |
| Genre: | Dictionary |
| Pub Date: | 12th century |
Asās al-Balāghah ("The Foundation of Eloquence")[1] is a thesaurus and dictionary of figurative speech by Al-Zamakhshari.[2] [3] Zamakhshari authored the work, in part, to reconcile what he viewed as the miraculous nature of the Qur'an with his theological views.[4]
Notable as the earliest fully alphabetical Arabic lexicography,[5] and in addition for the metaphorical content Zamakhshari includes with his literal definitions.[6] Zamakhshari's system lists words in alphabetical order according to the first component of their tri-radical consonant letters to the last. He excludes complicated derived and rare forms, such quadrilaterals and quintilaterals.[7] Zamakhshari's goal was to catalog both the literal and figurative meanings of Arabic words, and he used examples from the Qur'an and hadith for both.[7] He viewed words almost as living organisms that were given life by the way they were used in rhetoric.[8]