Muāwiya was also an orator, and Aisha was one of the most accomplished orators of all. Al-Ahnaf ibn Qays even said:

“I heard addresses delivered by Abū Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali, yet I never heard any created being speak more compellingly or more finely than Aisha.”

There were many eloquent orators among the Arabs, both before and after Islam, and the vast majority of them learned nothing from Ali. Thus, for someone to say,

“He is the fountainhead of the science of eloquence,”

is a manifest lie. It would be enough to refute this claim that the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—was a more accomplished orator and more eloquent than Ali, yet learned nothing from him.

Eloquence does not consist in pompous declamation, affected grandiloquence(1), or rhymed prose. Neither Ali’s addresses nor those of the other Arab orators, whether Companions or others, contained contrived rhymes or affected embellishments confined solely to wording—what is known as the science of rhetorical embellishment—as practiced by later composers of orations, epistles, and poetry.

Such features as occur in the Quran in His words,

“While they think that they are doing good work”

[Sūrat al-Kahf: 104],

and,

“Indeed, their Lord, concerning them…”

[Sūrat al-Ādiyāt: 11],

and the like, were not contrived to produce paronomasia. Rather, they occur incidentally and were not the primary intent, just as poetic meters occur in the Quran although poetry was not thereby intended. An example is His words, exalted is He:

“And basins as large as reservoirs, and cauldrons fixed in place”

[Sūrat Saba: 13],