Negated Antithesis as Reflected in the Qurʾān and in Pre-Qurʾānic Arabic Poetry

This article presents a comparative analysis of the negated antithesis (ṭibāq salb) in pre-Islamic poetry and the Qurʾān using data generated by the Rhetorical Element Identifier (REI), a computational tool capable of automatically detecting this device across both corpora. Drawing on a dataset of 1908 pre-Islamic poems and the full Qurʾānic text, the study explores how shared rhetorical patterns reflect a broader stylistic continuum between the two earliest Arabic literary traditions. While the Qurʾān employs structures attested in the poetic corpus, it frequently reconfigures them—shifting antithetical elements from verse-final to mid-verse positions, creating new syntactic configurations, and deploying the device for didactic and theological aims. The analysis also identifies thirty-three shared verbal roots that appear in comparable grammatical settings across both corpora, underscoring a common semantic foundation. By isolating a single rhetorical feature, the study highlights how the Qurʾān both inherits and reshapes earlier poetic strategies, offering fresh insight into the evolution of early Arabic rhetoric.