Levels of Persuasion in Arab-Islamic Sicilian Poetry

About this book

In Arab-Islamic Sicily, poetry was more than measured language: it was a form of soft power capable of entering the emotions and reshaping conviction. Khawla Jabbar Hamad Al-Bawi examines the different levels of persuasion operating within Sicilian Arabic poetry, looking beyond the surface of the verse to the rhetorical intelligence beneath it. The study explores how poets converted imagery into argument, feeling into influence, and eloquence into a living discourse that could shape attitudes and behaviour. Combining scholarly analysis with the pleasure of literary discovery, it asks whether a poem can function as a weapon and how a rhetorical image alters its recipient's awareness. The book revives an important tradition of Arabic argumentation while illuminating the beauty, reception, and intellectual references of a distinctive historical corpus.