Reviewing and Extracting the Equivalents of the word "Toubah" from Nahj-Al-Balaghah Via Referring to Semantic Differences

Since long time ago, Muslim scientists have been trying to find different methods to understand hadith – one of the main sources of Islam’s thought and action. One of these ways is to pay attention to the semantic differences of words in hadith. On the other hand, one of the noble sources of hadith is Nahj-Al-Balaghah. So, In order to have a better understanding of hadiths in this book, one should clarify the exact meaning of its words as well as review the words with approximate same meaning and try to find their diverse meaning. Through this way, we can select proper equivalents, and therefore benefit much better from Imam Ali’s eloquence and elegant literal speeches. There are various words in Nahj-Al-Balaghah, which have semantic relation and approximate same meaning with the word “Toubah” (repentance). These words have little semantic differences, which sometimes are considered as synonymous for the word “Toubah”. Thus, in this paper, we are dealing with the semantic differences of these words and the way Imam Ali (peace be upon him) applied them in Nahj-Al-Balaghah, via a descriptive-analytic method. It is clear that analyzing these words and finding their semantic differences would help us to have a proper perception of hadith and eloquent speeches of Imam Ali (peace be upon him).