الكناية التمدنية والتكرار اللفظي في "مقدمة" ابن خلدون: دراسة نقدية وتحليلية للخطاب التاريخي واللغوي

Civilizational Metonymy and Verbal Repetition in Ibn Khaldūn's "Muqaddimah": A Critical and Analytical Study of Historical and Linguistic Discourse

Abstract

This paper conducts a critical and analytical study of two stylistic and rhetorical phenomena in Ibn Khaldūn's Muqaddimah: civilizational metonymy (al-kindyah al-tamaddunīyah) and verbal repetition (al-takrār al-lafẓī). While Ibn Khaldūn has been extensively studied as a historian and sociologist, his linguistic and rhetorical strategies—particularly how he uses metonymy to condense complex civilizational processes and repetition to reinforce epistemological claims—remain under-researched. This study addresses a research gap in the stylistic analysis of classical Arabic historical prose from a combined literary and critical perspective. Using a qualitative analytical methodology grounded in classical Arabic balāghah (rhetoric) and modern discourse analysis, the paper examines selected passages from the Muqaddimah to identify patterns of metonymic substitution (e.g., "the desert" for Bedouin social organization, "the throne" for dynastic power) and types of lexical repetition (anaphora, epizeuxis, and structural parallelism). Key findings indicate that Ibn Khaldūn employs civilizational metonymy as a cognitive shortcut to link material conditions to abstract social theories, while verbal repetition serves both mnemonic and argumentative functions—reinforcing his cyclical theory of ʿaṣabiyyah (group feeling) and dynastic rise and fall. The study concludes that Ibn Khaldūn's prose is not merely functional but strategically rhetorical, blending historiographical precision with literary artistry. Recommendations include further comparative studies with other classical Arab historians (e.g., al-Ṭabarī, al-Masʿūdī) and application of computational stylistics to Ibn Khaldūn's corpus.