Poetic Hyperbole as a Legal Problem: Debates Among Premodern Muslim Jurisprudents

Hyperbolic expression was a subject keenly discussed by premodern Muslim literary critics, and these debates have received considerable attention among contemporary students of mediaeval Arabic literature. Since an exaggeration is technically an untrue statement, the issue was widely perceived as having a marked ethical dimension, on which Muslim jurisprudents also expressed a variety of different opinions. This essay explores such controversies among premodern Muslim jurists in particular, as well as the ways in which these debates relate to those among the littérateurs.