repentance. If on regaining your appetite you wish to see how the pure water of meaning in the phial of reality known as the manner of expression, is appropriate for you and how it agrees with you, and you have appetite for that pure water, go to the tavern and ask the taverner what eloquent speech is. He will tell you that eloquent speech is what is cooked in the cauldrons of knowledge — the elegant water-bearers swill around the water of life which stands in the jars of wisdom and is filtered through understanding, and imbibe ideas — speech which, pervading the innermost faculties, excites the emotions.

If you do not find such drunkard's words agreeable, listen to the news brought from Saba' by Solomon's Hoopoe, a deviser of water-works. See how it describes the All-Glorious One Who sent down the Qur'an and created the heavens and earth. The Hoopoe says: "I came across a people which does not prostrate before Allah, Who discloses what is hidden on the earth and in the heavens."(cf. 27:24-25) See, out of the attributes of perfection [the Qur'an] chose only the above-mentioned, which alludes to the Hoopoe's water-divining.

Indication

What I intend by the manner of expression (üslûb) is the form of speech and its mould (kalıp). Others say otherwise. Its rhetorical value is its bringing together and uniting the parts of a story and its disparate pieces. The intention, in accordance with the rule, "If something is established, it is established together with its corollaries," is, by prompting a part, to invigorate the whole of the story. As though, by the speaker pointing out a corner of his expression (üslûb), his addressee will himself be able to see all of it, if only faintly.

Consider the word 'combat'; wherever you are, it displays the battlefield like a window with the battle raging in it. There are many such words. It may be said that they are the imagination's cinema.