The Artistic Structure of the Nahj al-Balagha and Answering its Critics

The value and renown of the Nahj al-Balāgha is¡ on the one hand¡ due to the beautiful and profound enlivening words of Amīr al-Mu’minīn ʿAlī (‘a) and on the other hand¡ due to the skillful selection of Sayyid Raḍī¡ its compiler. The compiler’s introduction clearly elucidates his artistic structure¡ his motive and his outlook. Since his primary objective in this work was to compile what represents the most beautiful discourses of ʿAlī (‘a)¡ he consciously divided the work based on three different forms of discourse¡ which is beneficial when examining one type of discourse in relation to another. Being selective¡ not expounding upon the chains of transmission and avoiding repetition are some of the other creative choices of the compiler that he purposefully applied¡ and which played an important role in the persistency of this work. Not only is this not a point of weakness¡ it is one of the laudable achievements of his work. In this paper¡ we aim to compare the structure of the book to see how it conforms to what is mentioned in the introduction and then answer the various criticisms about it from both Shi‘i and Sunni scholars.