Significant Intersections between Legal and Rhetorical Theories: Lessons from an Interdisciplinary Reading of al-Bāqillānī's Theory of Language.

Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013) was a preeminent scholar and an influential participant in a diverse range of Islamic discourses including the Ash'arī school of theology and the Mālikī school of law. Al-Bāqillānī's texts are often studied within the context of individual disciplines, but this article demonstrates that an interdisciplinary reading of his scholarly production uncovers significant areas of overlap. These intersections bring to light topics of sustained concern for al-Bāqillānī that crosscut his work and allow him to draw together various Islamic intellectual discourses. Through looking at three such intersections, on the topics of bayān, muḥkamāt and mutashābihāt, and the so-called Mysterious Letters, this article shows that al-Bāqillānī' s argument in favor of the clarity and eminent understandability of language, including all of the Qur'ān, is best understood through a cross-disciplinary reading of al-Bāqillānī's oeuvre. Bringing together al-Bāqillānī's thought in the two seemingly disparate genres of uşūl al-fiqh (legal theory) and i'ļjāz al-Qurān (the inimitability of the Qur'ān) serves the dual purpose of examining the relationship between these fields and shedding light on al-Bāqillānī's work across disciplines. It thus contributes to a more complete picture of the identity of a scholar who was concerned with providing a consistent and multifaceted theory of language within a broader synthesis of Islamic thought [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]