Figurative Imagery in Ibn ʿĀshūr's al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr: A Coded Database of Figures and their Argumentative Functions

This dataset records the figurative images (simile, metaphor, metonymic majāz, attributive majāz, kināya including taʿrīḍ, and unspecified majāz) identified by Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir Ibn ʿĀshūr (d. 1393/1973) in his Qurʾān commentary al-Taḥrīr wa-l-Tanwīr. It was compiled by an exhaustive reading of the whole commentary, from the ten introductions to Sūrat al-Nās, in thirty batches. The main sheet contains 6,341 coded instances: 5,217 figures that Ibn ʿĀshūr affirms as the primary or preferred reading and 1,124 that he offers as possible readings. Each instance gives the sūra and verse, the word or phrase concerned, the main type and subtype of the figure with Ibn ʿĀshūr's own wording, the status (affirmed/possible), the printed volume and page (al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya li-l-Nashr, Tunis, 1984), the page id in al-Maktaba al-Shāmila (book 9776), the argumentative function (rhetorical exposition, refuting the opponent, theological use, legal use, dispelling a misleading literal sense, answering an objection), and Ibn ʿĀshūr's explicit position towards al-Zamakhsharī's al-Kashshāf. Additional sheets give per-sūra counts and density, cross-tabulations by function and by position towards al-Kashshāf, 1,536 instances of interpretation without an explicit figure term, 222 instances where Ibn ʿĀshūr rejects a figurative reading, the coding method, and a codebook (Arabic/English). A CSV export of the main sheet is included.