Examining the meanings of the letters in the forty-second supplication of Al-Sahifa Al-Sajjadiyyah “A case study based on the pictorial diagrams of Johnson’s theory”

Abstract

The current study deals with the volumetric, kinetic and force diagrams proposed by Johnson in the meanings of the forty-second supplication letters of Al-Sahifa Al-Sajjadiyya. Imam Sajjad () also conveyed his supplications at the level of human understanding through charts illustrated in letters. Therefore, in this article, in a descriptive and analytical way, we have examined the pictorial diagrams created in the meanings of the letters of the forty-second supplication of the Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya. In this study, we seek to examine the extent to which these three schemes are used in the meanings of the respective supplication letters. The purpose of this study is to show the prominent role of pictograms as one of the semantic tools in creating elicitive spaces, such as the description of the Qur’an and its interpretation by the Prophet () and the imams () in the minds of the addressees. After analyzing the data, it was found that in the forty-second supplication of Al-Sahifa Al-Sajjadiyyah, the movement diagram had the largest amount, while the volume and force diagrams ranked next.