Tashbih in the Qur’an: An Analysis of Its Rhetorical Structure and Semantic Functions

Abstract

This article examines tashbīh in the Qur’an as a semantic-rhetorical structure through which comparison organizes meaning, shapes perception, and strengthens theological and moral communication. The study addresses the tendency to treat tashbīh either as an ornamental category of Arabic balāghah or as a simple explanatory device, without sufficient attention to its internal rhetorical architecture and wider semantic functions. Using a qualitative textual-hermeneutical method, the article analyses selected Qur’anic passages containing explicit and implicit forms of tashbīh, with attention to the relationship between mushabbah, mushabbah bih, wajh al-shabah, and adāt al-tashbīh. The analysis combines classical Arabic rhetoric, Qur’anic stylistics, and modern semantic theory. The findings show that Qur’anic tashbīh operates first as a structured rhetorical architecture that connects abstract realities with concrete images. Second, it functions as semantic concretization, making theological and eschatological meanings perceptible through images such as vegetation, dust, light, darkness, fire, water, storms, and fragile dwellings. Third, tashbīh works as argumentative rhetoric by transforming comparison into persuasion, warning, and moral evaluation. Finally, the study demonstrates that Qur’anic tashbīh should be understood beyond ornamentation as a semantic-rhetorical method that links eloquence, cognition, and revelation. The article contributes to Qur’anic Studies, Arabic rhetoric, Ushuluddin, and Islamic literary hermeneutics by offering an integrated model for reading Qur’anic comparison as a dynamic mode of meaning-making.