1 • Introduction
abstract
This chapter introduces the Persian ʿilm-i maʿānī (literally, ‘the science of meanings’), one of the branches of the study of eloquence (balāġat) in the Islamic world, as the main subject of this book. Divided into three sections, the introduction provides a survey of Persian sources and secondary literature, a summary of the historical development of the Arabic and Persian variants of the discipline, and a definition of the aims and scope of the study.