Types of Images in Nahj al-Balaghah

Visualization is a way through which the speaker tries to communicate his mental concepts and ideas to the audience, as if portraying an image of that concept for them. Visualization is extensively used in Imam Ali’s words for visualizing and explaining different concepts. Images used in Imam Ali’s words can be classified into different types based on the rhetorical figures used for portraying them, the way they are used, the elements forming them and their structure, function, theme and content. These image types include linguistic, virtual, partial, singular, contextual, stationary, mobile, affirmative, collaborative, and images of surface, depth, etc. All these images portray sheer truth, and this is a quality in Imam Ali’s words: In his words, the image serves the reality.