(Re-)Forging the Science of Bayān

ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Ǧurǧānī took center stage in the field of bayān (called as well balāġa) during the first half of the twentieth century thanks, above all, to the efforts of Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Hellmut Ritter. As similar as they are in their approach, ʿAbduh and Ritter came to represent two mutually dismissive scholarly traditions with respect to Ǧurǧānī and the science of bayān. These two apparently divergent traditions, wittingly or unwittingly, contributed to forging one and the same image of Ǧurǧānī and bayān. As I attempt to show in this paper, this image that still prevails in the scholarly discourse was built under the shadow of falsafa.