The College of Islamic Sciences at the University of Karbala discussed the master’s thesis entitled “Verses of the Self in the Holy Qur’an – A Rhetorical Study” by the student Sajjad Dhamad Kamil.

This study emerged to answer a fundamental question represented in clarifying the nature of the human self as a Qur’anic term that deserves study and analysis, in addition to highlighting the rhetorical features in the Qur’anic texts in which this term appears and the extent of their influence on the recipient, which constituted the main problem around which the study revolved.

The researcher adopted the descriptive analytical method in his study, as the thesis was organized into a preface and three chapters. The preface was concerned with explaining the components of the title and the different directions related to it, while the first chapter addressed the structural features of the verses of the self in the Holy Qur’an under the title “The Rhetoric of Structures in the Verses of the Self.” It included two sections: the first on the rhetoric of declarative and imperative constructions, and the second on the rhetoric of the sentence and what falls under it such as foregrounding and postponement, definiteness and indefiniteness, stylistic shift, and brevity.

The second chapter dealt with the figurative and expressive aspect of the verses in which the term “self” appears under the title “The Rhetoric of Figurative Imagery in the Verses of the Self in the Holy Qur’an,” addressing topics of simile, metaphor, metonymy, literal meaning, and figurative meaning.

The third chapter was devoted to studying the aesthetics of badīʿ in the verses of the self in the Holy Qur’an, as one of the pillars of Arabic rhetoric that contributes to improving the resonance of words, highlighting their musical beauty, and strengthening the impact of meaning on the recipient. The chapter addressed the aesthetics of verbal embellishments such as paronomasia, rhymed prose, the Qur’anic verse ending, harmony between wording and meaning, parallelism, harmony, and balanced division, in addition to semantic embellishments such as antithesis, contrast, good justification, consideration of correspondence, hyperbole, and double entendre.

The thesis concluded with a conclusion that included the most prominent results reached by the researcher, which confirmed the great impact of the Qur’anic text and its lofty status in the field of rhetoric, due to its balance between wording and meaning, in addition to its ability to expand the suggestive horizon of the meaning carried by the Qur’anic term within its textual context.