Semantic fields in a poem (On the determination of the people of determination) For Al-Mutanabi

This paper is concerned with a semantic analytical study of the poem (Upon the Decree of the People of Determination) by the Abbasid poet Abi Al-Tayeb Al-Mutanabi, by classifying the semantic fields of the poem's vocabulary within the general methodological framework of linguistics, to reveal the various semantic aspects of the poem, and to define the cultural context frameworks for the poem’s time and the reasons for its organization, and this is done. Returning the vocabulary, each to its lexical field to which it belongs, then researching the appearances and features that these fields contain, determining the semantic relationships between those features, and then the effect of these relationships on understanding the text of the poem and the clarity of its hidden meanings and the circumstances surrounding its systems. In this research, the field of living and non-living assets, the field of abstracts, and the field of events were studied.
The results of the research were extracted from lexical statistics and semantic relationships, the poet’s reliance on the central and marginal connotations of expressions in parallel, and the domination of the addressee’s conscience of Mamdouh Saif al-Dawla al-Hamdani over the field of events. Where the poet addressed him in twenty-eight verses in three rhetorical formulas, sometimes in his name and sometimes with the pronoun of the addressee Ta and the pronoun of the second person kaf.
As for the field of expressions indicating animals, it was a limited presence in the poem, and was distinguished by the presence of lions and horses in multiple lexical units for the two factions, while the field of plants was not present in the poem, and words indicating war tools were abundant for both the vocabulary of the sword and the spear by employing them with multiple lexical units for each of them. It is a logical use of the necessity of the text’s need for this vocabulary in describing the course of the battle and its horrors and the valor of both Mamdouh Saif al-Dawla al-Hamdani, and stating the importance of victory and its value and perpetuating the defeat of the Romans. Therefore, the field of duality of movement and stability was distinguished by expressions indicating movement clearly, and the field of duality of life and death was profusely distinguished. Words indicating death vis-à-vis the scarcity of words indicative of life; The battle, the speed of events, and the oppression of the enemy required movement and focus on death and the dead, and the enthusiastic rhythm in the poem is not equivalent to stability and stillness.

The text of Al-Mutanabbi’s poem is rich in knowledge at the linguistic and lexical levels, and therefore it was adopted to be a code for this research. As the poet’s care for his good organization, choice of its words and good selection of vocabulary, he named his text so that it enjoys circulation and commonness among people from his time to our time.