A Stylistic Approach to the Alraaeiya of Ibn al-Arandas al-Heli

Some of the Arabic poems sought in the mourning of the Master of the Martyrs (peace be upon him) have taken on an eternal color, including the “seer” of Sheikh Saleh bin Al-Arandas. He is considered one of those who confined his poetry to the people of the house in praise, lamentation, and mourning, including his famous seer who became famous in Islamic history because of what received special attention from Imam Al-Mahdi (may God bless him and grant him peace). He did not recite in a gathering unless attended by the presence of the greatest remnant of God. Given the importance of this poem, and in order to understand more of the hidden meanings behind the text of the poem, to clarify the ideas presented in it, and then to reveal its stylistic phenomena, the present study investigates the text of the poem, relying on the stylistic approach and its different levels to produce the meanings of the intellectual and suggestive poem and to indicate its important stylistic indicators.

Ibn Al-Arandas and its Raeea:

Sheikh Saleh bin Abdul-Wahhab bin Al-Arandas Al-Hilli, nicknamed Ibn Al-Arandas, was one of the great scholars, poets, and scholars of the Shiites in the ninth century AH. He died about 840 in Al-Hilla Al-Fayhaa, and was buried there, and has a grave to be visited. Scholars such as Abd al-Hussein al-Amini in Al-Ghadeer, Seyyed Mohsen al-Amin in Shiite Notions, al-Samawi in Al-Tali’a, Jawad Shubar in Adab al-Tuff, and Al-Tarihi in Al-Muktab praised him for his mastery in the sciences of jurisprudence and principles, his piety and his sincere love for Ahl al-Bayt (AS). Also, they mentioned some of the poems of this great poet. His poetry tells about his skill in Arabic literature and his victory over language, morphology, grammar, and rhetoric. He has sad praises and elegies for Ahl al-Bayt (AS), especially the martyr Hussain (peace be upon him). Among the most famous of them is his famous seer in lamenting al-Hussain (AS), with this beginning:طوایا نظامی فی الزمان لها نشر   یعطرها من طیب ذکراکم نشر  This poem is full of emotions, soft feelings, and verbal and moral improvements prevailing in that era, with the support of faith and Qur’anic themes, in honor of the position of Ahl al-Bayt, especially Abu Abdullah al-Hussain (peace be upon him). The poem recounts the painful events that took place in Tuff, as well as the crimes of Yazid and his soldiers reprimanding them and talking about the sacrifices of Imam Hussein (AS) and his companions. This poem comes from a sad heart filled with sincere sad feelings spreading throughout the poem.

Stylistics and the Stylistic Approach:

Stylistics is one of the new topics that researchers have paid close attention to in recent years. Stylistics was at first concerned only with classical rhetoric. Today, however, it is also associated with several branches of science such as new criticism, literary history, linguistics, cognitive science, media, language education, and explores the characteristics of the text. The most important features of stylistics are the discovery of linguistic relationships in the text and the discovery of the special phenomena that produce valuable features of the text. In addition, in style, some try to find out the relationship of some traits to the personality of the author by studying the words of his poetry. Stylistics has different methods that examine each literary text from a certain angle. One such linguistic style is the structuralist style.Structuralism is one of the schools that today in the field of criticism and analysis of literary issues has presented and welcomed new literary perspectives and ideas. Structuralists believe that no single component makes sense and that each component of the work must be taken into account in relation to other elements and ultimately to the system as a coherent whole. It is worth noting that in stylistics, cases are studied that show a prominent style in the text (poetry or prose) and lead to the highlighting of the discourse and giving it a special form. The stylistic researcher touches on several levels in his analysis and focuses on them to achieve accurate and objective results. From this perspective, according to the point of view of stylistic researchers, a stylistic study of texts requires an approach that is considered one of the most effective methods of text analysis on three levels: linguistic, literary, and intellectual. It is throughcooperation and interdependence between these distinct linguistic levels that the  stylistic study of a text is organized.In this way, while investigating the components of the text, we analyze the structure of the work to find the stylistic elements contained in it. Based on the principles of stylistics at the intellectual level, we investigate the main idea of ​​the text and try to draw the recipients to what the author of the text wants to say, and what his interests are. On the literary level, attempts are made to investigate the techniques involved in the text, including rhetorical issues such as simile, metaphor, and idiosyncratic and semantic issues. As for the study of the linguistic level of the text, it includes three parts: phonetic, lexical, and grammatical, in which the stylistic researcher examines the music of the literary work and how to choose words, from the point of view of the simplicity or the structure of words, their repetition, and the type of selection according to the substitution axis, and the analysis of sentences in terms of shortness, length, and nominalism.