Ibn Abi al-Hadidʹs defense from Imam Aliʹs word choosing in Nahj al-Balagha

Lexical criticism is one of the most important kind of text criticism and analysis. Doubts about eloquence, lexical and semantic correctness of the words of Nahjul Balagha and Imam Aliʹs accuracy in choosing the words is the key issues that have been largely ignored. Ibn Abi al- Hadid al Mutazili (656 – 586 AH) in his commentary on Nahjul Balagha has paid particular attention to words and may be one of the few exegetes who defended the text by literary method. The doubts that Raised toward Nahj al-Balagha mainly is about three fields of: lexical correctness, connection of the used word to intended means and the semantic connection between two or more words. This article discusses about these literary and linguistic defenses in its different branches such as phonetic, lexical and syntactic. Also has explained the lexical status and accuracy of Imam Aliʹs in choosing the words in his remarks and arranged in subjective orders that is hoped to be a good pattern to similar studies.