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This article attempts to show the similarities and differences between epideictic genre in ancient western rhetoric, and the principles of praising and blaming in Islamic rhetorical textbooks. Epideictic genre is one of the three main rhetorical genres – along with deliberative and forensic genres- and its basic features may be traced in two kinds of textbooks: 1- Official rhetorical textbooks such as Aristotle’s, Cicero’s, Quintilian’s and others; 2- Sophistical textbooks such as Progymnsmata and Menander’s “Division of Epideictic Speeches”, and the treatise falsely attributed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, namely “On Epideictic Speeches”. The aim of this article is to show that both of these approaches have some counterparts in the Muslim world. The rhetorical Islamic textbooks are somehow the counterpart of official approach, and anthologies such as “Al-yavighit fi ba’z al-mavaghit”, “Tahsin al-ghabih va taghbih- al hasan” and many others reflect the sophistical approach to praising and blaming. Finally, the article concludes that although western and Islamic cultures differ fundamentally from each other, however, when it comes to praising/blaming, they are mostly on the same track.    

Keywords: Epideictic Genre, Praise and blame, Sophists, rhetoric

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