document_title: Timur

question_text: who was the sultan of delhi when tamar invaded

question_tokens: who was the sultan of delhi when tamar invaded

text: Timur

text: Ancestry

text:
Through his father, Timur claimed to be a descendant of Tumanay Khan, a male-line ancestor he shared in common with Genghis Khan.[17] Tuminai's great-great grandson Karachar Noyan (1165–1242/54) was a minister for the Emperor and was eventually transferred to assist his second son Chagatai in the governorship of Transoxiana.[18][19]
Though there are not many mentions of Karachar in 13th and 14th century records, later Timurid sources greatly emphasised his role in the early history of the Mongol Empire.[20] These histories also state that Genghis Khan later "established the bond of fatherhood and sonship" by marrying Chagatai's daughter to Karachar.[21] Through his descent from this marriage, Timur claimed kinship with the Chagatai Khans.

text: The origins of Timur's mother, Tekina Khatun are less clear. The Zafarnama merely states her name without giving any information regarding her background. Writing in 1403 Jean, Archbishop of Sultaniyya claimed that she was of lowly origins.[22] The Mu'izz al-Ansab, written decades later say that she was related to the Yasa'uri tribe, whose lands bordered that of the Barlas.[23] Ibn Khaldun recounted that Timur himself described to him his mother's descent from the legendary Persian hero Manuchehr.[24] Ibn Arabshah suggested that she was a descendant of Genghis Khan.[25] The 18th century Books of Timur identify her as the daughter of 'Sadr al-Sharia', believed to be referring to the Hanafi scholar Ubayd Allah al-Mahbubi of Bukhara.[26]

text: Early life

text: Timur was born in Transoxiana near the city of Kesh (modern Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan) some 80 kilometres (50 mi) south of Samarkand, part of what was then the Chagatai Khanate.[27] His father, Taraghai, was a minor noble of the Barlas,[27] a Mongolian tribe[28][29] that had been turkified in many aspects.[30][31][32] Historian Beatrice Forbes Manz believes that Timur may have later understated the social position of his father so as to make his own successes appear more remarkable. She states that though he is not believed to be especially powerful, Taraghai was reasonalbly wealthy and influential.[33] This is shown by Timur returning to his birthplace following the death of Taraghai in 1360, suggesting concern over his estate.[34] He is described by Arabshah as a magnate in the court of Amir Husayn Qara'unas.[25] In addition to this the father of the great Amir Hamid Kereyid of Moghulistan is stated as a friend of Taraghai's.[35]

text: According to Gérard Chaliand, Timur was a Muslim,[36] and he saw himself as Genghis Khan's heir.[36] Though not a Borjigid or a descendent of Genghis Khan,[37] he clearly sought to invoke the legacy of Genghis Khan's conquests during his lifetime.[38]

text: His name Temur means "Iron" in the Chaghatay language, Timur's mother-tongue (cf. Uzbek Temir, Turkish Demir).

text: Later Timurid dynastic histories claim that he was born on 8 April 1336, but most sources from his lifetime give ages that are consistent with a birthdate in the late 1320s. Historian Beatrice Forbes Manz suspects the 1336 date was designed to tie Timur to the legacy of Abu Sa'id Bahadur Khan, the last ruler of the Ilkhanate descended from Hulagu Khan, who died in that year.[39]

text: At the age of eight or nine, Timur and his mother and brothers were carried as prisoners to Samarkand by an invading Mongol army. In his childhood, Timur and a small band of followers raided travelers for goods, especially animals such as sheep, horses, and cattle.[39]:116 Around 1363, it is believed that Timur tried to steal a sheep from a shepherd but was shot by two arrows, one in his right leg and another in his right hand, where he lost two fingers. Both injuries crippled him for life. Some believe that Timur suffered his crippling injuries while serving as a mercenary to the khan of Sistan in Khorasan in what is today the Dashti Margo in southwest Afghanistan. Timur's injuries have given him the names of Timur the Lame and Tamerlane by Europeans.[11]:31

text: Timur was a Muslim, possibly belonging to the Naqshbandi school of Sufism, which was influential in Transoxiana.[40] However, his chief official religious counsellor and adviser was the Hanafi scholar 'Abdu 'l-Jabbar Khwarazmi. In Tirmidh, he had come under the influence of his spiritual mentor Sayyid Baraka, a leader from Balkh who is buried alongside Timur in Gur-e-Amir.[41][42][43] Timur was known to hold Ali and the Ahl al-Bayt in high regard and has been noted by various scholars for his "pro-Alid" stance. Despite this, Timur was noted for attacking the Shia with Sunni apologism, while at other times he attacked Sunnis on religious ground as well.[44] In contrast, Timur held the Seljuk Sultan Ahmad Sanjar in high regard for attacking the Ismailis at Alamut, while Timur's own attack on Ismailis at Anjudan was equally brutal.[44]

text: Personality

text: Timur is regarded as a military genius and as a brilliant tactician with an uncanny ability to work within a highly fluid political structure to win and maintain a loyal following of nomads during his rule in Central Asia. He was also considered extraordinarily intelligent – not only intuitively but also intellectually.[9]:16 In Samarkand and his many travels, Timur, under the guidance of distinguished scholars, was able to learn the Persian, Mongolian, and Turkish languages[11]:9 (according to Ahmad ibn Arabshah, Timur could not speak Arabic).[45] More importantly, Timur was characterized as an opportunist. Taking advantage of his Turco-Mongolian heritage, Timur frequently used either the Islamic religion or the law and traditions of the Mongol Empire to achieve his military goals or domestic political aims.[11] Timur was a learned king, and enjoyed the company of scholars; he was tolerant and generous to them. He was a contemporary of the Persian poet Hafez, and a story of their meeting explains that Timur summoned Hafiz, who had written a ghazal with the following verse:

text:
For the black mole on thy cheek
I would give the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.

text: Timur upbraided him for this verse and said, "By the blows of my well tempered sword I have conquered the greater part of the world to enlarge Samarkand and Bukhara, my capitals and residences; and you, pitiful creature, would exchange these two cities for a mole." Hafez, undaunted, replied, "It is by similar generosity that I have been reduced, as you see, to my present state of poverty." It is reported that the King was pleased by the witty answer and the poet departed with magnificent gifts.[46][47]

text: Timur used Persian expressions in his conversations often, and his motto was the Persian phrase rāstī rustī (راستی رستی, meaning "truth is safety" or "veritas salus").[45]

text: Military leader

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text: About 1360, Timur gained prominence as a military leader whose troops were mostly Turkic tribesmen of the region.[36] He took part in campaigns in Transoxiana with the Khan of the Chagatai Khanate. Allying himself both in cause and by family connection with Qazaghan, the dethroner and destroyer of Volga Bulgaria, he invaded Khorasan[48] at the head of a thousand horsemen. This was the second military expedition that he led, and its success led to further operations, among them the subjugation of Khwarezm and Urgench.

text: Following Qazaghan's murder, disputes arose among the many claimants to sovereign power. Tughlugh Timur of Kashgar, the Khan of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate, another descendant of Genghis Khan, invaded, interrupting this infighting. Timur was sent to negotiate with the invader but joined with him instead and was rewarded with Transoxania. At about this time, his father died and Timur also became chief of the Berlas. Tughlugh then attempted to set his son Ilyas Khoja over Transoxania, but Timur repelled this invasion with a smaller force.[48]

text: Rise to power

text: It was in this period that Timur reduced the Chagatai khans to the position of figureheads while he ruled in their name. Also during this period, Timur and his brother-in-law Amir Husayn, who were at first fellow fugitives and wanderers in joint adventures, became rivals and antagonists. The relationship between them began to become strained after Husayn abandoned efforts to carry out Timur's orders to finish off Ilya Khoja (former governor of Mawarannah) close to Tishnet.[11]:40

text: Timur began to gain a following of people in Balkh, consisting of merchants, fellow tribesmen, Muslim clergy, aristocracy and agricultural workers, because of his kindness in sharing his belongings with them. This contrasted Timur's behavior with that of Husayn, who alienated these people, took many possessions from them via his heavy tax laws and selfishly spent the tax money building elaborate structures.[11]:41–2 Around 1370, Husayn surrendered to Timur and was later assassinated, which allowed Timur to be formally proclaimed sovereign at Balkh. He married Husayn's wife Saray Mulk Khanum, a descendant of Genghis Khan, allowing him to become imperial ruler of the Chaghatay tribe.[11]

text: One day Aksak Temür spoke thusly:

text: "Khan Züdei (in China) rules over the city. We now number fifty to sixty men, so let us elect a leader." So they drove a stake into the ground and said: "We shall run thither and he among us who is the first to reach the stake, may he become our leader". So they ran and Aksak Timur, as he was lame, lagged behind, but before the others reached the stake he threw his cap onto it. Those who arrived first said: "We are the leaders." ["But,"] Aksak Timur said: "My head came in first, I am the leader." Meanwhile, an old man arrived and said: "The leadership should belong to Aksak Timur; your feet have arrived but, before then, his head reached the goal." So they made Aksak Timur their prince.[49][50]

text: Legitimization of Timur's rule

text: Timur's Turco-Mongolian heritage provided opportunities and challenges as he sought to rule the Mongol Empire and the Muslim world. According to the Mongol traditions, Timur could not claim the title of khan or rule the Mongol Empire because he was not a descendant of Genghis Khan. Therefore, Timur set up a puppet Chaghatay Khan, Suyurghatmish, as the nominal ruler of Balkh as he pretended to act as a "protector of the member of a Chinggisid line, that of Genghis Khan's eldest son, Jochi".[51]

text: As a result, Timur never used the title of khan because the name khan could only be used by those who come from the same lineage as Genghis Khan himself. Timur instead used the title of amir meaning general, and acting in the name of the Chagatai ruler of Transoxania.[39]:106

text: To reinforce his position in the Mongol Empire, Timur managed to acquire the royal title of son-in-law when he married a princess of Chinggisid descent.[9]:14

text: Likewise, Timur could not claim the supreme title of the Islamic world, caliph, because the "office was limited to the Quraysh, the tribe of the Prophet Muhammad". Therefore, Timur reacted to the challenge by creating a myth and image of himself as a "supernatural personal power" ordained by God.[51] Since Timur had a successful career as a conqueror, it was easy to justify his rule as ordained and favored by God since no ordinary man could be a possessor of such good fortune that resistance would be seen as opposing the will of God. Moreover, the Islamic notion that military and political success was the result of Allah's favor had long been successfully exploited by earlier rulers. Therefore, Timur's assertions would not have seemed unbelievable to fellow Islamic people.

text: Period of expansion

text: Timur spent the next 35 years in various wars and expeditions. He not only consolidated his rule at home by the subjugation of his foes, but sought extension of territory by encroachments upon the lands of foreign potentates. His conquests to the west and northwest led him to the lands near the Caspian Sea and to the banks of the Ural and the Volga. Conquests in the south and south-West encompassed almost every province in Persia, including Baghdad, Karbala and Northern Iraq.

text: One of the most formidable of Timur's opponents was another Mongol ruler, a descendant of Genghis Khan named Tokhtamysh. After having been a refugee in Timur's court, Tokhtamysh became ruler both of the eastern Kipchak and the Golden Horde. After his accession, he quarreled with Timur over the possession of Khwarizm and Azerbaijan. However, Timur still supported him against the Russians and in 1382 Tokhtamysh invaded the Muscovite dominion and burned Moscow.[52]

text: In 1395, Tamerlane reached the frontier of Principality of Ryazan, took Elets and advancing towards Moscow came near the banks of the Don River. Great Prince Vasily I of Moscow went with an army to Kolomna and halted at the banks of the Oka River. The clergy brought the famed Theotokos of Vladimir icon from Vladimir to Moscow. Along the way people prayed kneeling: “O Mother of God, save the land of Russia!” Suddenly, Tamerlane's armies retreated. In memory of this miraculous deliverance of the Russian land from Tamerlane on August 26, the all-Russian celebration in honor of the Meeting of the Vladimir Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God was established.[53]

text: Conquest of Persia

text: After the death of Abu Sa'id, ruler of the Ilkhanate, in 1335, there was a power vacuum in Persia. In the end, Persia was split amongst the Muzaffarids, Kartids, Eretnids, Chobanids, Injuids, Jalayirids, and Sarbadars. In 1383, Timur started his lengthy military conquest of Persia, though he already ruled over much of Persian Khorasan by 1381, after Khwaja Mas'ud, of the Sarbadar dynasty surrendered. Timur began his Persian campaign with Herat, capital of the Kartid dynasty. When Herat did not surrender he reduced the city to rubble and massacred most of its citizens; it remained in ruins until Shahrukh Mirza ordered its reconstruction.[54] Timur then sent a General to capture rebellious Kandahar. With the capture of Herat the Kartid kingdom surrendered and became vassals of Timur; it would later be annexed outright less than a decade later in 1389 by Timur's son Miran Shah.

text: Timur then headed west to capture the Zagros Mountains, passing through Mazandaran. During his travel through the north of Persia, he captured the then town of Tehran, which surrendered and was thus treated mercifully. He laid siege to Soltaniyeh in 1384. Khorasan revolted one year later, so Timur destroyed Isfizar, and the prisoners were cemented into the walls alive. The next year the kingdom of Sistan, under the Mihrabanid dynasty, was ravaged, and its capital at Zaranj was destroyed. Timur then returned to his capital of Samarkand, where he began planning for his Georgian campaign and Golden Horde invasion. In 1386, Timur passed through Mazandaran as he had when trying to capture the Zagros. He went near the city of Soltaniyeh, which he had previously captured but instead turned north and captured Tabriz with little resistance, along with Maragha. He ordered heavy taxation of the people, which was collected by Adil Aqa, who was also given control over Soltaniyeh. Adil was later executed because Timur suspected him of corruption.

text: Timur then went north to begin his Georgian and Golden Horde campaigns, pausing his full-scale invasion of Persia. When he returned, he found his generals had done well in protecting the cities and lands he had conquered in Persia. Though many rebelled, and his son Miran Shah, who may have been regent, was forced to annex rebellious vassal dynasties, his holdings remained. So he proceeded to capture the rest of Persia, specifically the two major southern cities of Isfahan and Shiraz. When he arrived with his army at Isfahan in 1387, the city immediately surrendered; he treated it with relative mercy as he normally did with cities that surrendered (unlike Herat). However, after Isfahan revolted against Timur's taxes by killing the tax collectors and some of Timur's soldiers, he ordered the massacre of the city's citizens; the death toll is reckoned at between 100,000 and 200,000.[55] An eye-witness counted more than 28 towers constructed of about 1,500 heads each.[56] This has been described as a "systematic use of terror against towns...an integral element of Tamerlane's strategic element", which he viewed as preventing bloodshed by discouraging resistance. His massacres were selective and he spared the artistic and educated.[55] This would later influence the next great Persian conqueror: Nader Shah.

text: Timur then began a five-year campaign to the west in 1392, attacking Persian Kurdistan. In 1393, Shiraz was captured after surrendering, and the Muzaffarids became vassals of Timur, though prince Shah Mansur rebelled but was defeated, and the Muzafarids were annexed. Shortly after Georgia was devastated so that the Golden Horde could not use it to threaten northern Iran. In the same year, Timur caught Baghdad by surprise in August by marching there in only eight days from Shiraz. Sultan Ahmad Jalayir fled to Syria, where the Mamluk Sultan Barquq protected him and killed Timur’s envoys. Timur left the Sarbadar prince Khwaja Mas'ud to govern Baghdad, but he was driven out when Ahmad Jalayir returned. Ahmad was unpopular but got some dangerous help from Qara Yusuf of the Kara Koyunlu; he fled again in 1399, this time to the Ottomans.

text: Tokhtamysh–Timur war

text: In the meantime, Tokhtamysh, now khan of the Golden Horde, turned against his patron and in 1385 invaded Azerbaijan. The inevitable response by Timur resulted in the Tokhtamysh–Timur war. In the initial stage of the war, Timur won a victory at the Battle of the Kondurcha River. After the battle Tokhtamysh and some of his army were allowed to escape. After Tokhtamysh's initial defeat, Timur invaded Muscovy to the north of Tokhtamysh's holdings. Timur's army burned Ryazan and advanced on Moscow. He was pulled away before reaching the Oka River by Tokhtamysh's renewed campaign in the south.[57]

text: In the first phase of the conflict with Tokhtamysh, Timur led an army of over 100,000 men north for more than 700 miles into the steppe. He then rode west about 1,000 miles advancing in a front more than 10 miles wide. During this advance, Timur's army got far enough north to be in a region of very long summer days causing complaints by his Muslim soldiers about keeping a long schedule of prayers. It was then that Tokhtamysh's army was boxed in against the east bank of the Volga River in the Orenburg region and destroyed at the Battle of the Kondurcha River, in 1391.

text: In the second phase of the conflict, Timur took a different route against the enemy by invading the realm of Tokhtamysh via the Caucasus region. In 1395, Timur defeated Tokhtamysh in the Battle of the Terek River, concluding the struggle between the two monarchs. Tokhtamysh was unable to restore his power or prestige, and he was killed about a decade later in the area of present-day Tyumen. During the course of Timur's campaigns, his army destroyed Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde, and Astrakhan, subsequently disrupting the Golden Horde's Silk Road. The Golden Horde no longer held power after their losses to Timur.

text: Ismailis

text: In May 1393, Timur's army invaded the Anjudan, crippling the Ismaili village only a year after his assault on the Ismailis in Mazandaran. The village was prepared for the attack, evidenced by its fortress and system of underground tunnels. Undeterred, Timur's soldiers flooded the tunnels by cutting into a channel overhead. Timur's reasons for attacking this village are not yet well understood. However, it has been suggested that his religious persuasions and view of himself as an executor of divine will may have contributed to his motivations.[58] The Persian historian Khwandamir explains that an Ismaili presence was growing more politically powerful in Persian Iraq. A group of locals in the region was dissatisfied with this and, Khwandamir writes, these locals assembled and brought up their complaint with Timur, possibly provoking his attack on the Ismailis there.[58]

text: Campaign against the Tughlaq Dynasty

text:
In 1398, Timur invaded northern India, attacking the Delhi Sultanate ruled by Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq of the Tughlaq Dynasty. He was opposed by Ahirs and faced some reversals from the Jats, but the Sultanate at Delhi did nothing to stop him.[59][60]
After crossing the Indus river on 30 September 1398, he sacked Tulamba and massacred its inhabitants.[61] Then he advanced and captured Multan by October.[62]

text: Timur crossed the Indus River at Attock (now in Pakistan) on 24 September 1398. His invasion did not go unopposed and he encountered resistance from the Governor of Meerut during the march to Delhi. Timur was still able to continue his approach to Delhi, arriving in 1398, to fight the armies of Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq, which had already been weakened by a succession struggle within the royal family.

text: Capture of Delhi (1398)

text: The battle took place on 17 December 1398. Sultan Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq and the army of Mallu Iqbal[63] had war elephants armored with chain mail and poison on their tusks.[11]:267 As his Tatar forces were afraid of the elephants, Timur ordered his men to dig a trench in front of their positions. Timur then loaded his camels with as much wood and hay as they could carry. When the war elephants charged, Timur set the hay on fire and prodded the camels with iron sticks, causing them to charge at the elephants howling in pain: Timur had understood that elephants were easily panicked. Faced with the strange spectacle of camels flying straight at them with flames leaping from their backs, the elephants turned around and stampeded back toward their own lines. Timur capitalized on the subsequent disruption in the forces of Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq, securing an easy victory. Nasir-ud-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq fled with remnants of his forces. Delhi was sacked and left in ruins. Before the battle for Delhi, Timur executed 100,000 captives.[16]

text: The capture of the Delhi Sultanate was one of Timur's greatest victories, arguably surpassing the likes of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan because of the harsh conditions of the journey and the achievement of taking down one of the richest cities at the time. After Delhi fell to Timur's army, uprisings by its citizens against the Turkic-Mongols began to occur, causing a retaliatory bloody massacre within the city walls. After three days of citizens uprising within Delhi, it was said that the city reeked of the decomposing bodies of its citizens with their heads being erected like structures and the bodies left as food for the birds by Timur's soldiers. Timur's invasion and destruction of Delhi continued the chaos that was still consuming India, and the city would not be able to recover from the great loss it suffered for almost a century.[11]:269–274

text: Campaigns in the Levant

text: Before the end of 1399, Timur started a war with Bayezid I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and the Mamluk sultan of Egypt Nasir-ad-Din Faraj. Bayezid began annexing the territory of Turkmen and Muslim rulers in Anatolia. As Timur claimed sovereignty over the Turkmen rulers, they took refuge behind him.

text: In 1400, Timur invaded Christian Armenia and Georgia. Of the surviving population, more than 60,000 of the local people were captured as slaves, and many districts were depopulated.[64]

text: Then Timur turned his attention to Syria, sacking Aleppo[65][66] and Damascus.[67][68][69][70] The city's inhabitants were massacred, except for the artisans, who were deported to Samarkand. Timur cited the killing of Hasan ibn Ali by the Umayyad caliph Muawiyah I and the killing of Husayn ibn Ali by Yazid I as the reason for his massacre of the inhabitants of Damascus.

text: Timur invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After the capture of the city, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him. When they ran out of men to kill, many warriors killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign, and when they ran out of prisoners to kill, many resorted to beheading their own wives.[71]

text: In the meantime, years of insulting letters had passed between Timur and Bayezid. Finally, Timur invaded Anatolia and defeated Bayezid in the Battle of Ankara on 20 July 1402. Bayezid was captured in battle and subsequently died in captivity, initiating the twelve-year Ottoman Interregnum period. Timur's stated motivation for attacking Bayezid and the Ottoman Empire was the restoration of Seljuq authority. Timur saw the Seljuks as the rightful rulers of Anatolia as they had been granted rule by Mongol conquerors, illustrating again Timur's interest with Genghizid legitimacy.

text: After the Ankara victory, Timur's army ravaged Western Anatolia, with Muslim writers complaining that the Timurid army acted more like a horde of savages than that of a civilized conqueror.[citation needed] But Timur did besiege and take the city of Smyrna, a stronghold of the Christian Knights Hospitalers, thus he referred to himself as ghazi or "Warrior of Islam". A mass beheading was carried out in Smyrna by Timur's soldiers.[72][73][74][75]

text: Timur was furious with the Genoese and Venetians, as their ships ferried the Ottoman army to safety in Thrace. As Lord Kinross reported in The Ottoman Centuries, the Italians preferred the enemy they could handle to the one they could not.

text: While Timur invaded Anatolia, Qara Yusuf assaulted Baghdad and captured it in 1402. Timur returned to Persia from Anatolia and sent his grandson Abu Bakr ibn Miran Shah to reconquer Baghdad, which he proceeded to do. Timur then spent some time in Ardabil, where he gave Ali Safavi, leader of the Safaviyya, a number of captives. Subsequently, he marched to Khorasan and then to Samarkhand, where he spent nine months celebrating and preparing to invade Mongolia and China.[76]

text: He ruled over an empire that, in modern times, extends from southeastern Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, through Central Asia encompassing part of Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and even approached Kashgar in China. The conquests of Timur are claimed to have caused the deaths of up to 17 million people, an assertion impossible to verify.[77]

text: Of Timur's four sons, two (Jahangir and Umar Shaikh) predeceased him. His third son, Miran Shah, died soon after Timur, leaving the youngest son, Shah Rukh. Although his designated successor was his grandson Pir Muhammad b. Jahangir, Timur was ultimately succeeded in power by his son Shah Rukh. His most illustrious descendant Babur founded the Islamic Mughal Empire and ruled over most of Afghanistan and North India. Babur's descendants Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, expanded the Mughal Empire to most of the Indian subcontinent.

text: Markham, in his introduction to the narrative of Clavijo's embassy, states that, after Timur died, his body "was embalmed with musk and rose water, wrapped in linen, laid in an ebony coffin and sent to Samarkand, where it was buried". His tomb, the Gur-e Amir, still stands in Samarkand, though it has been heavily restored in recent years.

text: Attempts to attack the Ming dynasty

text: By 1368, Han Chinese forces had driven the Mongols out of China. The first of the new Ming dynasty's emperors, the Hongwu Emperor, and his son, the Yongle Emperor, produced tributary states of many Central Asian countries. The suzerain-vassal relationship between Ming empire and Timurid existed for a long time. In 1394, Hongwu's ambassadors eventually presented Timur with a letter addressing him as a subject. He had the ambassadors Fu An, Guo Ji, and Liu Wei detained.[79] Neither Hongwu's next ambassador, Chen Dewen (1397), nor the delegation announcing the accession of the Yongle Emperor fared any better.[79]

text: Timur eventually planned to invade China. To this end Timur made an alliance with surviving Mongol tribes based in Mongolia and prepared all the way to Bukhara. Engke Khan sent his grandson Öljei Temür Khan, also known as "Buyanshir Khan" after he converted to Islam while at the court of Timur in Samarkand.[80]

text: Death

text: Timur preferred to fight his battles in the spring. However, he died en route during an uncharacteristic winter campaign. In December 1404, Timur began military campaigns against Ming China and detained a Ming envoy. He suffered illness while encamped on the farther side of the Syr Daria and died at Farab on February 17, 1405,[81] before ever reaching the Chinese border.[82] After his death the Ming envoys such as Fu An and the remaining entourage were released[79] by his grandson Khalil Sultan.

text: Timur was buried in Gur-i Amir, his mausoleum in Samarkand.

text: Succession

text: Just before his death, Timur designated his grandson Pir Muhammad ibn Jahangir as his successor. However, his other descendants did not abide by this wish, and spent the next fifteen years engaged in violent infighting. His son Shahrukh Mirza and grandson Khalil Sultan struggled for control until Shahrukh won.

text: Exchanges with Europe

text: Timur had numerous epistolary and diplomatic exchanges with various European states, especially Spain and France. Relations between the court of Henry III of Castile and that of Timur played an important part in medieval Castilian diplomacy. In 1402, the time of the Battle of Ankara, two Spanish ambassadors were already with Timur: Pelayo de Sotomayor and Fernando de Palazuelos. Later, Timur sent to the court of the Kingdom of León and Castile a Chagatai ambassador named Hajji Muhammad al-Qazi with letters and gifts.

text: In return, Henry III of Castile sent a famous embassy to Timur's court in Samarkand in 1403–06, led by Ruy González de Clavijo, with two other ambassadors, Alfonso Paez and Gomez de Salazar. On their return, Timur affirmed that he regarded the king of Castile "as his very own son".

text: According to Clavijo, Timur's good treatment of the Spanish delegation contrasted with the disdain shown by his host toward the envoys of the "lord of Cathay" (i.e., the Yongle Emperor), the Chinese ruler. Clavijo's visit to Samarkand allowed him to report to the European audience on the news from Cathay (China), which few Europeans had been able to visit directly in the century that had passed since the travels of Marco Polo.

text: The French archives preserve:

text:
A 30 July 1402 letter from Timur to Charles VI of France, suggesting that he send traders to Asia. It is written in Persian.[83]
A May 1403 letter. This is a Latin transcription of a letter from Timur to Charles VI, and another from Miran Shah, his son, to the Christian princes, announcing their victory over Bayezid I at Smyrna.[84]

text: A copy has been kept of the answer of Charles VI to Timur, dated 15 June 1403.[85]

text: Legacy

text: Timur's legacy is a mixed one. While Central Asia blossomed under his reign, other places, such as Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi and other Arab, Georgian, Persian, and Indian cities were sacked and destroyed and their populations massacred. He was responsible for the effective destruction of the Nestorian Christian Church of the East in much of Asia. Thus, while Timur still retains a positive image in Muslim Central Asia, he is vilified by many in Arabia, Iraq, Persia, and India, where some of his greatest atrocities were carried out. However, Ibn Khaldun praises Timur for having unified much of the Muslim world when other conquerors of the time could not.[86] The next great conqueror of the Middle East, Nader Shah, was greatly influenced by Timur and almost re-enacted Timur's conquests and battle strategies in his own campaigns. Like Timur, Nader Shah conquered most of Caucasia, Persia, and Central Asia along with also sacking Delhi.

text: Timur's short-lived empire also melded the Turko-Persian tradition in Transoxiana, and in most of the territories that he incorporated into his fiefdom, Persian became the primary language of administration and literary culture (diwan), regardless of ethnicity.[87] In addition, during his reign, some contributions to Turkic literature were penned, with Turkic cultural influence expanding and flourishing as a result. A literary form of Chagatai Turkic came into use alongside Persian as both a cultural and an official language.[88]

text: Tamerlane virtually exterminated the Church of the East, which had previously been a major branch of Christianity but afterwards became largely confined to a small area now known as the Assyrian Triangle.[89]

text: Timur became a relatively popular figure in Europe for centuries after his death, mainly because of his victory over the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid. The Ottoman armies were at the time invading Eastern Europe and Timur was ironically seen as an ally.

text: Timur has now been officially recognized as a national hero in Uzbekistan. His monument in Tashkent now occupies the place where Karl Marx's statue once stood.

text: Muhammad Iqbal, a philosopher, poet and politician in British India who is widely regarded as having inspired the Pakistan Movement,[90][better source needed] composed a notable poem entitled Dream of Timur, the poem itself was inspired by a prayer of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II:[citation needed]

text: The Sharif of the Hijaz suffers due to the divisive sectarian schisms of his faith, And lo! that young Tatar (Timur) has boldly re-envisioned magnanimous victories of overwhelming conquest.

text: In 1794, Sake Dean Mahomed published his travel book, The Travels of Dean Mahomet. The book begins with the praise of Genghis Khan, Timur, and particularly the first Mughal emperor, Babur. He also gives important details on the then incumbent Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II.

text: Historical sources

text: The earliest known history of his reign was Nizam ad-Din Shami's Zafarnama, which was written during Timur's lifetime. Between 1424 and 1428, Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi wrote a second Zafarnama drawing heavily on Shami's earlier work. Ahmad ibn Arabshah wrote a much less favorable history in Arabic. Arabshah's history was translated into Latin by the Dutch Orientalist Jacobus Golius in 1636.

text: As Timurid-sponsored histories, the two Zafarnamas present a dramatically different picture from Arabshah's chronicle. William Jones remarked that the former presented Timur as a "liberal, benevolent and illustrious prince" while the latter painted him as "deformed and impious, of a low birth and detestable principles".[citation needed]

text: Malfuzat-i Timuri

text: The Malfuzat-i Timurī and the appended Tuzūk-i Tīmūrī, supposedly Timur's own autobiography, are almost certainly 17th-century fabrications.[16][91] The scholar Abu Taleb Hosayni presented the texts to the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, a distant descendant of Timur, in 1637–38, supposedly after discovering the Chagatai language originals in the library of a Yemeni ruler. Due to the distance between Yemen and Timur's base in Transoxiana and the lack of any other evidence of the originals, most historians consider the story highly implausible, and suspect Hosayni of inventing both the text and its origin story.[91]

text: European views

text: Timur arguably had a significant impact on the Renaissance culture and early modern Europe.[92] His achievements both fascinated and horrified Europeans from the fifteenth century to the early nineteenth century.

text: European views of Timur were mixed throughout the fifteenth century, with some European countries calling him an ally and others seeing him as a threat to Europe because of his rapid expansion and brutality.[93]:341

text: When Timur captured the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid at Ankara, he was often praised and seen as a trusted ally by European rulers, such as Charles VI of France and Henry IV of England, because they believed he was saving Christianity from the Turkish Empire in the Middle East. Those two kings also praised him because his victory at Ankara allowed Christian merchants to remain in the Middle East and allowed for their safe return home to both France and England. Timur was also praised because it was believed that he helped restore the right of passage for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land.[93]:341–44

text: Other Europeans viewed Timur as a barbaric enemy who presented a threat to both European culture and the religion of Christianity. His rise to power moved many leaders, such as Henry III of Castile, to send embassies to Samarkand to scout out Timur, learn about his people, make alliances with him, and try to convince him to convert to Christianity in order to avoid war.[93]:348–49

text: In the introduction to a 1723 translation of Yazdi's Zafarnama, the translator wrote:[94]

text: [M. Petis de la Croix] tells us, that there are calumnies and impostures, which have been published by authors of romances, and Turkish writers who were his enemies, and envious at his glory: among whom is Ahmed Bin Arabschah...As Timur-Bec had conquered the Turks and Arabians of Syria, and had even taken the Sultan Bajazet prisoner, it is no wonder that he has been misrepresented by the historians of those nations, who, in despite of truth, and against the dignity of history, have fallen into great excesses on this subject.

text: Exhumation and alleged curse

text: Timur's body was exhumed from his tomb on 19 June 1941 and his remains examined by the Soviet anthropologist Mikhail M. Gerasimov, Lev V. Oshanin and V. Ia. Zezenkova. It was determined that Timur was a tall and broad-chested man with strong cheek bones. At 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 meters), Timur was tall for his era. The examinations confirmed that Timur was lame and had a withered right arm due to his injuries. His right thighbone had knitted together with his kneecap, and the configuration of the knee joint suggests that he had kept his leg bent at all times and therefore would have had a pronounced limp.[95][96] Gerasimov reconstructed the likeness of Timur from his skull and found that Timur's facial characteristics displayed Mongoloid features with some Caucasoid admixture. Oshanin also concluded that Timur's cranium showed predominately the characteristics of a South Siberian Mongoloid type.[96]

text: It is alleged that Timur's tomb was inscribed with the words, "When I rise from the dead, the world shall tremble." It is also said that when Gerasimov exhumed the body, an additional inscription inside the casket was found, which read, "Whomsoever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than I."[97] In any case, three days after Gerasimov began the exhumation, Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the largest military invasion of all time, upon the Soviet Union.[98] Timur was re-buried with full Islamic ritual in November 1942 just before the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad.[99]

text: In the arts

text:
Tamburlaine the Great, Parts I and II (English, 1563–1594): play by Christopher Marlowe
Tamerlane (1701): play by Nicholas Rowe (English)
Tamerlano (1724): opera by George Frideric Handel, in Italian, based on the 1675 play Tamerlan ou la mort de Bajazet by Jacques Pradon.
Bajazet (1735): opera by Antonio Vivaldi, portrays the capture of Bayezid I by Timur
Il gran Tamerlano (1772): opera by Josef Mysliveček that also portrays the capture of Bayezid I by Timur
Tamerlane: first published poem of Edgar Allan Poe (American, 1809–1849).
Timur is the deposed, blind former King of Tartary and father of the protagonist Calaf in the opera Turandot (1924) by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.
Tamerlane (1928): historical novel by Harold Lamb.
Timour appears in the story Lord of Samarkand by Robert E. Howard.
Tamerlan: novel by Colombian writer Enrique Serrano in Spanish[100]
Tamburlaine: Shadow of God: a BBC Radio 3 play by John Fletcher, broadcast 2008, is a fictitious account of an encounter between Tamburlaine, Ibn Khaldun, and Hafez.

text: Gallery

text:
Geometric courtyard surrounding the tomb showing the Iwan, and dome.

View of the Registan.

Timurid Mosque in Herat.

Goharshad Mosque, Timurid architecture

Green Mosque (Balkh) is a Timurid mosque that inspired Shah Jahan.

Bibi-Khanym Mosque

Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, a prime example of Timurid architecture.

text: Consorts

text: Timur had forty-three consorts:

text:
Turmish Agha, mother of Jahangir Mirza, Jahanshah Mirza and Aka Begi;
Oljay Turkhan Agha (m. 1357/58), daughter of Amir Mashlah and granddaughter of Amir Qazaghan;
Saray Mulk Khanum (m. 1367), widow of Amir Husain, and daughter of Qazan Khan;
Islam Agha (m. 1367), widow of Amir Husain, and daughter of Amir Bayan Salduz;
Ulus Agha (m. 1367), widow of Amir Husain, and daughter of Amir Khizr Yasuri;
Dilshad Agha (m. 1374), daughter of Shams ed-Din and his wife Bujan Agha;
Touman Agha (m. 1377), daughter of Amir Musa and his wife Arzu Mulk Agha, daughter of Amir Bayezid Jalayir;
Chulpan Mulk Agha, daughter of Haji Beg of Jetah;
Tukal Khanum (m. 1395), daughter of Mongol Khan Khizr Khawaja Oglan;
Tolun Agha, concubine, and mother of Umar Shaikh Mirza I;
Mengli Agha, concubine, and mother of Miran Shah ibn Timur;
Toghay Turkhan Agha, lady from the Kara Khitai, widow of Amir Husain, and mother of Shahrukh Mirza ibn Timur;
Tughdi Bey Agha, daughter of Aq Sufi Qongirat;
Sultan Aray Agha, a Nukuz lady;
Malikanshah Agha, a Filuni lady;
Khand Malik Agha, mother of Ibrahim Mirza;
Sultan Agha, mother of a son who died in infancy;

text:
His other wives and concubines included:
Dawlat Tarkan Agha, Burhan Agha, Jani Beg Agha, Tini Beg Agha, Durr Sultan Agha, Munduz Agha, Bakht Sultan Agha, Nowruz Agha, Jahan Bakht Agha, Nigar Agha, Ruhparwar Agha, Dil Beg Agha, Dilshad Agha, Murad Beg Agha, Piruzbakht Agha, Khoshkeldi Agha, Dilkhosh Agha, Barat Bey Agha, Sevinch Malik Agha, Arzu Bey Agha, Yadgar Sultan Agha, Khudadad Agha, Bakht Nigar Agha, Qutlu Bey Agha, and another Nigar Agha.

text: Descendants of Timur

text: Sons of Timur

text:
Jahangir Mirza ibn Timur – with Turmish Agha;
Umar Shaikh Mirza I – with Tolun Agha;
Miran Shah ibn Timur – with Mengli Agha;
Shahrukh Mirza ibn Timur – with Toghay Turkhan Agha.

text: Daughters of Timur

text:
Aka Begi, married to Mohammad Bey, son of Amir Musa – with Turmish Agha;
unknown, married to Solyman Mirza – mother unknown;
unknown, married to Cumaleza Mirza – mother unknown;
Sultan Bakht Begum, married firstly Mohammed Mireke, married secondly, 1389/90, Soliman Shah – with Oljay Turkhan Agha.

text: Sons of Jahangir

text:
Muhammad Sultan bin Jahangir Mirza
Pir Muhammad bin Jahangir Mirza

text: Sons of Umar Shaikh Mirza I

text:
Pir Muhammad ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
Iskandar ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
Rustam ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
Bayqarah ibn Umar Shaikh Mirza I
Mansur ibn Bayqarah
Husayn ibn Mansur bin Bayqarah
Badi' al-Zaman
Muhammed Mu'min
Muzaffar Hussein
Ibrahim Hussein

text: Sons of Miran Shah

text:
Khalil Sultan ibn Miran Shah
Abu Bakr ibn Miran Shah
Muhammad ibn Miran Shah
Abu Sa'id Mirza
Umar Shaikh Mirza II
Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur
the Mughals
Jahangir Mirza II

text: Sons of Shahrukh Mirza

text:
Mirza Muhammad Taraghay – better known as Ulugh Beg
Abdul-Latif
Ghiyath-al-Din Baysonqor
Ala-ud-Daulah Mirza ibn Baysonqor
Ibrahim Mirza
Sultan Muhammad ibn Baysonqor
Yadigar Muhammad
Mirza Abul-Qasim Babur ibn Baysonqor
Sultan Ibrahim Mirza
Abdullah Mirza
Mirza Soyurghatmïsh Khan
Mirza Mohammed Juki


document_title: Glossary of rhetorical terms

question_text: in humorous writing a device that uses exaggeration for emphasis is called

root

text: Glossary of rhetorical terms

text: Owing to its origin in ancient Greece and Rome, English rhetorical theory frequently employs Greek and Latin words as terms of art. This page explains commonly used rhetorical terms in alphabetical order. The brief definitions here are intended to serve as a quick reference rather than an in-depth discussion. For more information, click the terms.

tag: p

text:
Top
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

tag: ul

text: A[edit]

text:
Absurdity. The exaggeration of a point beyond belief.
Accumulatio. The emphasis or summary of previously made points or inferences by excessive praise or accusation.
Acutezza. Wit or wordplay used in rhetoric.
Ad hominem. Rebutting an argument by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making it rather than the substance of the argument itself.
Adjunction. When a verb is placed at the beginning or the end of a sentence instead of in the middle. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "At the beginning, as follows: 'Fades physical beauty with disease or age.' At the end, as follows: 'Either with disease or age physical beauty fades.'"
Aesthetics. The examination of symbolic expression to determine its rhetorical possibilities.
Aetiologia. Giving a cause or a reason.
Affectus. A term used by the Italian Humanists of the Renaissance to describe the source of emotions or passions in the human mind.
Agenda. That which a persuader successfully makes salient and then spins. [see: Vatz, Richard E.]
Alloisis. The breaking down of a subject into its alternatives.
Ambigua. An ambiguous statement used in making puns.
Amplificatio. An all-purpose term for all the ways an argument can be expanded and enhanced.
Amplification. The act and the means of extending thoughts or statements to increase rhetorical effect, to add importance, or to make the most of a thought or circumstance.
Anacoenosis. A speaker asks his or her audience or opponents for their opinion or answer to the point in question.[1]
Anacoluthon. An abrupt change of syntax within a sentence. (What I want is — like anybody cares.)
Anadiplosis. Repeating the last word of one clause or phrase to begin the next.
Analogy. The use of a similar or parallel case or example to reason or argue a point.
Anaphora. From the Greek ἀναφέρω, "I repeat". A succession of sentences beginning with the same word or group of words.
Anastrophe. Inversion of the natural word order.
Anecdote. A brief narrative describing an interesting or amusing event.
Animorum motus. The emotions.
Antanaclasis. From Greek ̩̩ἀντανάκλασις, a figure of speech involving a pun, consisting of the repeated use of the same word, each time with different meanings.
Anthimeria. Substitution of one part of speech for another (such as a noun used as a verb). It is traditionally called antimeria.
Anticlimax. A bathetic collapse from an elevated subject to a mundane or vulgar one. A specialized form of catacosmesis.
Antimetabole. Repetition of two words or short phrases, but in reversed order to establish a contrast. It is a specialized form of chiasmus.
Antinome (/ˈæntənoʊm/ AN-tə-nohm). Two ideas about the same topic that can be worked out to a logical conclusion, but the conclusions contradict each other.
Antiptosis. The substitution of one case for another.
Antistrophe. In rhetoric, repeating the last word in successive phrases. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "Since the time when from our state concord disappeared, liberty disappeared, good faith disappeared, friendship disappeared, the common weal disappeared." Also see: epiphora.
Antithesis. The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced or parallel words, phrases, or grammatical structures; the second stage of the dialectic process.
Antonomasia. The substitution of an epithet for a proper name.
Aphaeresis. The omission of a syllable from the beginning of a word.
Apocope. The omission of the last letter or syllable of a word.
Apokoinu construction. A blend of two clauses through a lexical word that has two syntactical functions, one in each of the blended clauses.
Apophasis / Apophesis. Pretending to deny something as a means of implicitly affirming it. As paralipsis, mentioning something by saying that you will not mention it. The opposite of occupatio.
Aporia. An attempt to discredit an opposing viewpoint by casting doubt on it.
Aposiopesis. An abrupt stop in the middle of a sentence; used by a speaker to convey unwillingness or inability to complete a thought or statement.
Apostrophe. From Greek ἀποστροφή, a figure of speech consisting of a sudden turn in a text towards an exclamatory address to an imaginary person or a thing.
Appeals. Rhetorical devices used to enhance the plausibility of one's argument; Aristotle's appeals included ethos, logos, and pathos.
Apposition. The placement of two words or phrases side by side with one element serving to define or modify the other.
Arete. Virtue, excellence of character, qualities that would be inherent in a "natural leader", a component of ethos.
Argument. Discourse characterized by reasons advanced to support conclusions.
Argumentum ad baculum. Settling a question by appealing to force.
Argumentum ad hominem. Using what you know about your opponent's character as a basis for your argument.
Arrangement. See: dispositio.
Ars arengandi. Teaching of forensic speaking during the Medieval rhetorical era.
Ars dictaminis. The art of writing letters, introduced and taught during the Medieval rhetorical era.
Ars poetria. Medieval teaching of grammar and style through analysis of poetry.
Ars praedicandi. The art of preaching based on rhetorical ideas and introduced during the Medieval rhetorical era during an increasing intersection between rhetoric and religion.
Artistic proofs. Rhetorically-produced methods for persuasion. For Aristotle, three possibilities would be ethos, pathos, and logos.
Assonance. Words that repeat the same vowel sound.
Asyndeton. The deliberate omission of conjunctions that would normally be used.
Audience. Real, imagined, invoked, or ignored, this concept is at the very center of the intersections of composing and rhetoric.
Aureation. The use of Latinate and polysyllabic terms to "heighten" diction.
Auxesis. To place words or phrases in a certain order for climactic effect.
Axioms. The point where scientific reasoning starts. Principles that are not questioned.

text: B[edit]

text:
Backing. Supporting an argument's merit.
Barbarism. Use of a non-standard word, expression or pronunciation in a language, particularly one prescriptively regarded as an error in morphology.
Bases. The issues at question in a judicial case.
Bathos. An emotional appeal that inadvertently evokes laughter or ridicule.
Bdelygmia. Expression of hatred or contempt.
Belles lettres. Written works considered quality because they are pleasing to the senses.
Belletristic movement. Movement of rhetoric in the late 18th and early 19th centuries emphasizing stylistic considerations of rhetoric. It also expanded rhetoric into a study of literature and literary criticism and writing.
Bomphiologia. Bombastic speech: a rhetorical technique wherein the speaker brags excessively.
Brachylogia. Brevity of diction.
Brevitas. Concise expression.
Burden of proof. Theory of argument giving the obligation of proving a case to the asserting party.
Buzzword. A word or phrase used to impress, or one that is fashionable.

text: C[edit]

text:
Canon. A term often used to discuss significant literary works in a specific field, used by Cicero to outline five significant parts of the rhetorical composition process.
Captatio benevolentiae. Any literary or oral device that seeks to secure the goodwill of the recipient or hearer, as in a letter or in a discussion.
Catachresis. The inexact use of a similar word in place of the proper one to create an unlikely metaphor. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "The power of man is short" or "the long wisdom in the man".
Catacosmesis. A reverse climax: an arrangement of phrases or topics in decreasing order, as with best, worse, worst. Its extreme form is anticlimax.
Charisma. An attribute that allows a speaker's words to become powerful.
Chiasmus. From the name of the Greek letter "χ", a figure of speech consisting of the contrasting of two structurally parallel syntactic phrases arranged "cross-wise", i.e., in such a way that the second is in reverse order from the first.
Circa rem. Latin: The circumstances surrounding the act in one Roman topical system.
Claim 1. A primary point being made to support an argument. 2. Stephen Toulmin: the resulting conclusion to an argument.
Classicism. A revival in the interest of classical antiquity languages and texts.
Climax. An arrangement of phrases or topics in increasing order, as with good, better, best. The opposite of catacosmesis.
Colon. A colon (Greek κῶλον) is a rhetorical figure consisting of a clause that is grammatically, but not logically, complete.
Colloquialism. A word or phrase that is not formal or literary, typically one used in ordinary or familiar conversation.
Common topics. Arguments and approaches useful in rhetorical settings; koinoi topoi.
Consubstantiality. Substance commonality.
Conclusio. Latin: A letter's conclusion.
Confirmatio. Latin: The section of a judicial speech (in Roman rhetorical theory) that offers evidence supporting the claims given during the statement of facts.
Confutatio. Latin: Counterargument in Roman rhetorical theory.
Constraints. Referring to "persons, events, objects, and relations that are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence". Originally used by Lloyd Bitzer.
Contingency. In rhetoric, it relates to the contextual circumstances that do not allow an issue to be settled with complete certainty.
Context. The circumstances surrounding an issue that should be considered during its discussion.
Conversio. Latin: Varying sentence structure to discover its most agreeable form.
Conversation model. The model, in critique of traditional rhetoric by Sally Gearhart, that maintains the goal of rhetoric is to persuade others to accept your own personal view as correct.
Cookery. Plato believed rhetoric was to truth as cookery was to medicine. Cookery disguises itself as medicine and appears to be more pleasing, when in actuality it has no real benefit.
Critical theory. Systematically analyzing any means of communication for hidden assumptions and connotations.
Concession. Acknowledgment of objections to a proposal.

text: D[edit]

text:
Data. Stephen Toulmin. Initial evidence supporting a claim.
Deconstruction. Analyzing communication artifacts by scrutinizing their meaning and related assumptions, with the goal of determining the social and systemic connotations behind their structure.
Deduction. Moving from an overall hypothesis to infer something specific about that hypothesis.
Delectare. To delight; viewed by Cicero as one of the three goals of rhetoric.
Delivery. Canon #5 in Cicero's list of rhetorical canons; traditionally linked to oral rhetoric, refers to how a speech is given (including tone of voice and nonverbal gestures, among others).
Demos. The ordinary citizens of an ancient Greek city-state, considered as a political entity; population; the common people.
Dialectic. A rhetorical term that has been defined differently by Aristotle and Ramus, among others; generally, it means using verbal communication to come to an agreement on a topic.
Diallage. Establishing a single point with the use of several arguments.
Dictamen. The art of writing letters.
Dispositio. In the classical theory of the production of speech, pronuntiatio dispositio refers to the stage of planning the structure and sequence of ideas. Often referred to as arrangement, the second of Cicero's five rhetorical canons.
Dissoi logoi. Contradictory arguments.
Distribution. Dividing a whole subject into its various parts.
Divisio. To divide into categories or classes.
Docere. To teach; viewed by Cicero as one of the three goals of rhetoric.
Dramatistic. Way to look at the nature of language stressing on language as an action. ex. uses expressions such as 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not'.
Dysphemism. A term with negative associations for something in reality fairly innocuous or inoffensive.

text: E[edit]

text:
Ecphonesis. A sentence consisting of a single word or short phrase ending with an exclamation point.
Ellipse. The suppression of ancillary words to render an expression more lively or more forceful.
Elocutio. In the classical theory of the production of a speech (Pronuntiatio), elocution refers to the stage of elaborating the wording of a text, using correct grammar and diction.
Enallage. The switching of grammatical forms for an expressive purpose.
Energia. The Greek word for 'energy' that was used by Aristotle in reference to the force or vigor of expression in writing or speech.
Enthymeme. A type of argument that is grounded in assumed commonalities between a rhetor and the audience. (For example: Claim 1: Bob is a person. Therefore, Claim 3: Bob is mortal. The assumption (unstated Claim 2) is that People are mortal). In Aristotelian rhetoric, an enthymeme is known as a "rhetorical syllogism:" it mirrors the form of a syllogism, but it is based on opinion rather than fact (For example: Claim 1: These clothes are tacky. Claim 2: I am wearing these clothes. Claim 3: Therefore, I am unfashionable).
Enumeratio. Making a point more forcibly by listing detailed causes or effects; to enumerate: count off or list one by one.
Epanalepsis. A figure of speech in which the same word or phrase appears both at the beginning and at the end of a clause.
Epanaphora. In rhetoric, repeating the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases for emphasis. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "To you must go the credit for this, to you are thanks due, to you will this act of yours bring glory."
Epideictic. Ceremonial rhetoric, such as might be found in a funeral or victory speech.
Epiphora. The repetition of a phrase or word at the end of several sentences or clauses. Also see: anaphora.
Epistemology. Philosophical study directed at understanding how people gain knowledge.
Epistrophe. A succession of clauses, phrases or sentences that all end with the same word or group of words.
Epithet. A term used as a descriptive and qualifying substitute for the name of a person, place or thing.
Epithymonexphrasos. Making others wish to speak, not to oppose rather to join the conversation, exhortation, lat. exoptamus.[2]
Epizeuxis. Emphasizing an idea using one word repetition.
Eristic. Communicating with the aim of winning the argument regardless of truth. The idea is not necessarily to lie, but to present the communication so cleverly that the audience is persuaded by the power of the presentation.
Erotema. The so-called 'Rhetorical Question', where a question is asked to which an answer is not expected.[3]
Ethos. A rhetorical appeal to an audience based on the speaker/writer's credibility.
Ethopoeia. The act of putting oneself into the character of another to convey that persons feelings and thoughts more vividly.
Euphemism. An innocuous, inoffensive or circumlocutory term or phrase for something unpleasant or obscene. E.g., in advertising for female hygiene products any liquid shown is never red, it's usually blue.
Evidence. In rhetoric, facts or testimony used to strengthen a claim.
Exemplum. The citation of an example, either truthful or fictitious.
Exigence. A rhetorical call to action; a situation that compels someone to speak out.
Exordium. The introductory (Lat: exordium, beginning) portion of an oration.
Expression. applying the correct language to an argument.

text: F[edit]

text:
Fable. A short allegorical story.
Facetiae. Latin, humor or wit.
Facilitas. The improvising of effective oral or written language to suit any situation.
Faculty psychology. 18th century, the mind contains faculties that include understanding, imagination, passion, and will.
False consciousness. (Marxism), a distorted view of reality, people, and the world.
Feminist rhetoric. Rhetorical theory concerned with feminism and its critique of social structures.
Fictio. The attribution of rational traits to non-rational creatures.
Field-dependent. Stephen Toulmin's term, standards for assessing arguments that are specific to a certain field.
Field-invariant. Stephen Toulmin's term, standards for assessing arguments that are not determined by the particular field.
Figure. Unusual arrangement of language that tries to achieve unique meaning for ideas.
Figura etymologica. Repetition of two etymologically-related terms.
Forensic oratory. speaking in a courtroom.

text: G[edit]

text:
Gens. Latin, an influential group of families.
Genera. (Plural of genus) Classification by race, kind, or possession of similarities; descriptive of different types of oratory.
Graecismus. The use of Greek idiom.

text: H[edit]

text:
Hendiadys. Using two nouns linked by a conjunction to express a single complex idea.
Hermeneutics. The theoretical underpinnings of interpreting texts, usually religious or literary.
Heteroglossia. Refers to use of a variety of voices or styles within one literary work or context.
Heuristics. Determining or applying the proper methods for investigation.
Homologia. A tedious style or redundancy of style.
Homoioteleuton. From the ancient Greek όμοιοτέλευτος/homoioteleutos (ὅμοιος/hόmoios = "same", and τελευτή/teleutế = "ending")is a figure of speech where adjacent or parallel words have similar endings inside a verse, a sentence. Authors often use it to evoke music or to give a rhythm to their phrase.
Horismus. A brief and often antithetical definition.
Hypallage. A literary device that reverses the syntactic relation of two words (as in "her beauty's face").
Hyperbaton. A figure of speech in which words that naturally belong together are separated from each other for emphasis or effect.
Hyperbole. A figure of speech where emphasis is achieved through exaggeration, independently or through comparison. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "His body was as white as snow, his face burned like fire."
Hypophora. When a speaker asks aloud what his/her adversaries have to say for themselves or against the speaker, and then proceeds to answer the question. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "When he reminded you of your old friendship, were you moved? No, you killed him nevertheless, and with even greater eagerness. And then when his children grovelled at your feet, were you moved to pity? No, in your extreme cruelty you even prevented their father's burial."
Hypothesis. An educated guess; usually a clause claiming "if" something happens, "then" a result will come of it.
Hypsos. Great or worthy writing, sometimes called sublime. Longinus's theme in On the Sublime.
Hypozeuxis. A sentence in which every clause has its own subject and verb.
Hysteron proteron. A rhetorical device in which the first key word of the idea refers to something that happens temporally later than the second key word. The goal is to call attention to the more important idea by placing it first.

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Icon. Using imagery to create resemblance.
Identification. Connecting with a larger group through a shared interpretation or understanding of a larger concept; Kenneth Burke was one of the first people to use the term in this way.
Ideology. A way of understanding one's external surroundings.
Ignoratio elenchi. A conclusion that is irrelevant.
Imitatio. Latin, imitation.
Inartistic proofs. Discovered information stemming from the raw data of experience.
Indefinite questions. In Quintlian, questions that are discussed without referring to anything specifically.
Indignatio. To arouse indignation in the audience.
Induction. Rhetorical method for coming to general conclusions through specific examples.
Ingenium. Latin, In Vico- the ability to understand similarities and relationships that is innate in all humans.
In re. Latin, arguments concerned with what actually happened.
Institutio Oratoria. Educational and rhetorical principles as described and prescribed in treatise by Quintillian.
Insultatio. Abusing a person to his/her face by using irony and derisive language.
Interlacement. Combining the figures Antistrophe and Epanaphora for rhetorical style and emphasis. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "Who are they who have often broken treaties? The Carthaginians. Who are they who have waged ware with severest cruelty? The Carthaginians."
Intersubjective agreements. agreements on the fair conduct of an argument among individuals participating in dialogue.
Invention. Described by Cicero as the process of determining "valid or seemingly valid arguments;" the first of his five rhetorical canons.
Invitational rhetoric. (Foss and Griffin, 1995) rhetoric involving "an invitation to understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in quality, immanent value, and self-determination". Emphasizes the relationship between the speaker and freedoms of the audience to make decisions for themselves in order to promote equality.
Ioci. Jokes, see: Cicero's De Oratore and his theory of humor.
Irony. A deliberate contrast between indirect and direct meaning to draw attention to the opposite.
Isocolon. A string of phrases of corresponding structure and equal length.
Issues of definition. Things related to naming an act.
Issues of fact. Issues related to an act's occurrence.
Issues of quality. Issues related to the seriousness of an act.

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Jargon. Highly technical language used by specific group.
Judicial. Type of oratory used to attack or defend someone in a court of law.

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Kairos. Generally means, "timing" or "the right circumstances".
Kategoria. Greek for Accusation.
Koinoi topoi. Common topics; in a rhetoric situation, useful arguments and strategies.
Koinonia. To consult with your opponent or judge.
Kolakeia. Flattery; telling people what they want to hear while disregarding their best interests; employed by sophistic rhetoricians.

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Latinitas. Stylistic feature involving the proper use of language.
Lexis. Style.
Literae humanae. Academic disciplines that are known as the liberal arts: languages, philosophy, history, literature, music, art and certain abstract sciences.
Litotes. Stating a positive by negating the negative — a form of understatement. ("I am not unaware of your difficulties.")
Localism. A word, phrase, or custom particular to one's location.
Loci communes. Types of arguments. Quintillian trained orators to learn intellectual habits to access the arguments quickly.
Locution. Refers to the utterance of a statement.
Logical fallacy. Misconceptions resulting from faulty reasoning.
Logical positivism. The effort to make scientific standards applicable for resolving all issues.
Logical proof. Arguments used to persuade audience. Reasoned.
Logos. Rhetorical appeals based on logic or reasoning.
Logology. Kenneth Burke. Study of the specific theological terms used. Not to find the truth or falseness of the statement, but why that particular word was chosen.

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Major premise. Statement in a syllogism. Generalization.
Magnanimity. Doing good to others, "its opposite is meanness of spirit" (from Aristotle's Rhetoric).
Material fallacy. False notion concerning the subject matter of an argument.
Maxim. "A saying drawn from life, which shows concisely either what happens or ought to happen in life, for example: 'Every beginning is difficult.'" (from Rhetorica ad Herennium)
Memory. Described by Cicero as the "firm mental grasp of matter and words;" the fourth of his five rhetorical canons.
Metanarrative. Universal theories positing to know all aspects of humanity.
Metaphor. A figure of speech where a word that normally applies to one thing is used to designate another for the sake of creating a mental picture. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "... he lightly breathed a favoring breath".
Metonymy. A figure of speech that substitutes one word or phrase for another with which it is closely associated. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "one should say 'wine' for 'Liber', 'wheat' for 'Ceres'." In UK, people speak of "Crown property" meaning property belonging to the Sovereign. Similarly: "The White House had no comment to make." ("White House", the residence and office building of the president of the United States, is used as a metonymy for the president or the president's administration.
Metron. Greek, measure.
Minor premise. Statement in an argument.
Modus inveniendi. Latin, in St Augustine, material used to understand the scriptures.
Modus proferendi. Latin, in St. Augustine, expressing ideas found within the scriptures.
Moral reasoning. Reasoning employed in rhetoric that determines a conclusion based on evidence. Used in issues of ethics, religion, economics, and politics.
Motive. Something that plays a role in one's decision to act.
Movere. To persuade; viewed by Cicero as one of the three goals of rhetoric.

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Narratio. A presentation of essential facts in a judicial speech.
Narration. Story telling, involving the elements of time, place, actor, action, cause and manner.
Necessary cause. Cause without which effect couldn't/wouldn't have occurred.
Negatio. To negate or deny.
Neoplatonism. School of thought emanating from the works of Plato and Aristotle in early BCE Rome.
Noema. Speech that is deliberately subtle or obscure.
Nomos. Greek, a social custom or convention.
Non sequitur. A statement bearing no relationship to the preceding context.
Notaries. Secretaries trained in rhetoric for dealing with the agreements that were needed for commercial cities in Italy to function.

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Occupatio. Introducing and responding to one's opponents' arguments before they have the opportunity to bring them up. The opposite of apophasis.
Oictos. A show of pity or compassion.
Ominatio. A prophecy of evil.
Onomatopoeia. Words that imitate the sounds, objects, or actions they refer to. (ex. "buzz", "hullabaloo", "bling")
Opening. First part of discourse. Should gain audiences' attention.
Optatio. A wish exclaimed.
Orcos. An oath.
Oxymoron. Opposed or markedly contradictory terms joined together for emphasis.[4]

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Parachesis. Repetition of the same sound in several words in close succession. Alliteration (initial rhyme) is a special case of parachesis.
Paradeigma. Greek, argument created by a list of examples that leads to a probable generalized idea.
Paradiastole. Greek, redescription - usually in a better light.
Paralipsis. A form of apophasis when a rhetor introduces a subject by denying it should be discussed. To speak of someone or something by claiming not to.
Parallel syntax. repetition of similar sentence structures.
Parallel structure. Using the same tense and structure.
Paraprosdokian. A sentence in which the latter half takes an unexpected turn.
Parataxis. Using juxtaposition of short, simple sentences to connect ideas, as opposed to explicit conjunction.
Parenthesis. An explanatory or qualifying word, clause, or sentence inserted into a passage that is not essential to the literal meaning.
Paremvolia. An interference of speak by speaking.
Parisosis. When clauses have very similar lengths, as measured by syllables; sometimes taken as equivalent to isocolon.
Parody. To imitate something or somebody comically.
Paromoiosis. Parallelism of sound between the words of two clauses approximately equal in size. The similarity of sound can occur at the beginning of the clauses, at the end (where it is equivalent to homoioteleuton), in the middle or throughout the clauses.
Paronomasia. A pun, a play on words, often for humorous effect.
Particular audience. In Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, the actual audience the orator addresses.
Pathos. Greek, the emotional appeal to an audience in an argument. One of Aristotle's three proofs.
Perfectus orator. Latin, a complete orator.
Periphrasis. The substitution of many or several words where one would suffice; usually to avoid using that particular word.
Peroratio. Latin, the last section of a judicial speech where the speaker is the strongest.
Personification. A figure of speech that gives human characteristics to inanimate objects, or represents an absent person as being present. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "But if this invincible city should now give utterance to her voice, would she not speak as follows?"
Petitio. Latin, in a letter, an announcement, demand, or request.
Phallogocentrism. Examines the relationship between logos (reason) and the phallus (representative of male genitalia). Just as the phallus is implicitly and sometimes explicitly assumed to be the only significant sexual organ, the masculine is the accepted as the central point of reference of validity and authority for a society.
Phronesis. Greek, practical wisdom; common sense.
Physis. Greek, nature.
Pian. Ancient China, the art of disputing.
Pistis. Greek, belief.
Plausibility. Rhetoric that is believable right away due to its association with something that the audience already knows or has experienced.
Pleonasm. The use of more words than necessary to express an idea.
Poetriae, Ars. Latin, poetry as an art.
Polis. Greek, the city-state, especially the people in the city-state.
Polyphonic. Having multiple voices.
Polyptoton. The repetition of a word or root in different cases or inflections within the same sentence.
Polysyndeton. The repeated use of conjunctions within a sentence, particularly where they do not necessarily have to be used.
Portrayal. Describing a person clearly enough for recognition. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "I mean him, men of the jury, the ruddy, short, bent man, with white and rather curly hair, blue-grey eyes, and a huge scar on his chin, if perhaps you can recall him to memory."
Position. The stance taken by a rhetor that s/he is attempting to prove through argumentation.
Positivism. Term created by Auguste Comte that posits that science, math, or logic can prove any reasonable claim.
Postmodernism. Related to rhetoric, a field of inquiry concerned with the ideological underpinnings of commonly held assumptions.
Praedicandi, Ars. Latin, Preaching.
Praegnans constructio. A form of brachylogy in which two clauses or two expressions are condensed into one.
Pragmatism. Approach based on practical consideration and immediate perception to the exclusion of moral (in the sense of 'should') and ethic arguments.
Pragmatographia. Description of an action (such as a battle, a feast, a marriage, a burial, etc.).
Presence. In Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, choosing to emphasize certain facts and ideas instead of others, leading the audience along that path.
Presumption. An idea is reasonable or acceptable only until it is sufficiently challenged.
Prolepsis. A literary device in which a future state is spoken of in the present; for example, a condemned man may be called a "dead man walking".
Proof surrogate. An expression used to suggest that there is evidence or authority for a claim without actually citing such evidence or authority.
Prosopopoeia. Speaking as another person or object; in a sense, the inverse of apostrophe.
Pronuntiato. Latin: The delivery of an oration or an argument in a manner befitting the subject matter and style, while maintaining control of voice and body.
Protreptic. Greek, the potential to persuade through language.
Prudence. Judging practically.
Psogos. Greek for blame.
Psychagogos. Greek for a poet.
Psyche. Greek for the mind or soul.
Public sphere. Place where individuals can engage in discussion without the political or state interests interfering.
Purpose. What the speaker or writer is trying to do with language.

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Quadrivium. The major subjects taught in medieval times: geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music.
Quaestiones. Debatable points around which disputes are centered.

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Reasoning by contraries. Where the first statement of two opposite statements directly proves the second. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "Or how should you expect a person whose arrogance has been insufferable in private life, to be agreeable and not forget himself when in power...?"
Repetition, repetition, repetition is the simple repeating of a word for emphasis.
Rebuttal. Stephen Toulmin's term, conditions on the acceptability of a claim.
Res. Latin: An argument's substance.
Rhetor. A person who is in the course of presenting or preparing rhetorical discourse.
Rhetores. (Greek) Those who make a living by speaking persuasively.
Rhetoric. The study and practice of good effective expression. Also a type of discourse- focusing on goals of the speech or piece of writing that attempts to sway the mind of the audience.
Rhetoric of fiction. Wayne Booth's idea "the author's judgement is always present" in a narrative.
Rhetorical audience. Those who can be persuaded by rhetoric.
Rhetorical discourse. Discourse created within the boundary of the principles of rhetoric.
Rhetorical opposition. Protagoras's idea that there are two sides to everything.
Rhetorical question. A question asked to make a point instead of to elicit a direct answer.
Rhetorical situation. A term made popular by Lloyd Bitzer; describes the scenario that contains a speech act, including the considerations (purpose, audience, author/speaker, constraints to name a few) that play a role in how the act is produced and perceived by its audience. The counterargument regarding Bitzer's situation-rhetoric relationship was made by Richard E. Vatz in "The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation" and "The Mythical Status of Situational Rhetoric" in The Review of Communication, 2009. He argued for a salience-meaning (or now, agenda-framing-spin) model of persuasion, which emphasized rhetoric as a creative act with increased agent or persuader responsibility for the situation his or her rhetoric creates. He maintained this added to the importance of rhetorical study and that Bitzer's formulation was "anti-rhetorical".
Rhetorical theory. The organized presentation of the art or rhetoric, descriptions of the various functions of rhetoric, and clarifications of how rhetoric achieves its goals.

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Salience/Agenda; Meaning/Spin. The basic components of all rhetorical struggles, per Richard E Vatz, The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion, (Kendall Hunt, 2013).
Salon. Intellectual assembly in an aristocratic setting; primarily associated with France in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Salutatio. (Latin) A written greeting.
Sannio. (Latin) the fool. The role to avoid when using humor in a speech.
Scesis Onomaton. (Greek) omit the verb. A style of repeating an idea using words or phrases similar in meaning in close proximity.
Scare-line. A word or phrase that is quoted to scare the reader, or, in a political campaign, to smear an opposing candidate, or to cause an estrangement or cause something to seem unfamiliar in a supernatural way
Scholasticism. Rhetorical study of Christianity that was intellectually prominent in 11th–15th-century Western Europe, emphasizing rhetorical concepts by Aristotle and a search for universal truth.
Scientific method. A system of observing and analyzing data through induction; prominent school of thought since the 17th century whose proponents are often critical of rhetoric.
Scientific reasoning. Moving from axioms to actual conclusions. Also Syllogistic logic.
Scientism. In Weaver, applying scientific assumptions to subjects that are not completely natural.
Scientistic. Kenneth Burke. Way of looking at the nature of language as a way of naming or defining something. ex. 'It is' or 'It is not.'
Second Sophistic. Rhetorical era in Rome that dealt primarily with rhetorical style through some of the Greek Sophists' concepts, while neglecting its political and social uses because of censorship.
Semantics. Philosophical study of language that deals with its connection to perceptions of reality.
Semiotics. Branch of semantics concerning language and communication as a system of symbols.
Sensus communis. A society's basic beliefs and values.
Sententia. Applying a general truth to a situation by quoting a maxim or other wise saying as a conclusion or summary of that situation.
Shui. Formal persuasion in ancient China.
Sign. Term from semiotics that describes something that has meaning through its connection to something else, like words.
Signifying. Term from semiotics that describes the method through which meaning is created with arbitrary signs.
Simile. A figure of speech that compares unlike things, implying a resemblance between them. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "He entered the combat in body like the strongest bull, in impetuosity like the fiercest lion."
Skepticism. Type of thought that questions whether universal truth exists and is attainable by humans.
Solecismus. Ignorantly misusing tenses, cases, and genders.
Sophists. Considered the first professional teachers of oratory and rhetoric (ancient Greece 4th century BC).
Soraismus.The ignorant or affected mingling of languages.
Sprezzatura. The ability to appear that there is seemingly little effort used to attain success. The art of being able to show that one is able to deceive. Baldessare Castiglione.
Spin. In Vatz, the act of competing to infuse meaning into agenda items for chosen audiences.
Starting points. In Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, the place between the speaker and audience where the argument can begin.
Stasis system. System of finding arguments by means of looking at ideas that are contradictory.
Status quo. Latin: The generally accepted existing condition or state of affairs.
Straw man. An argument that is a logical fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.
Studia humanitatis. Latin: Humanistic studies deemed indispensable in Renaissance-era education; rhetoric, poetics, ethics, politics.
Syllepsis. A word modifying others in appropriate, though often incongruous ways. This is a similar concept to zeugma.
Syllogism. A type of valid argument that states if the first two claims are true, then the conclusion is true. (For example: Claim 1: People are mortal. Claim 2: Bob is a person. Therefore, Claim 3: Bob is mortal.) Started by Aristotle.
Syllogistic logic. Reasoning in the form of a syllogism.
Symbol. A visual or metaphorical representation of an idea or concept.
Symbolic inducement. Term coined by Kenneth Burke to refer to rhetoric.
Sympheron. (Greek) Path that is to one's advantage.
Symploce. A figure of speech in which several successive clauses have the same first and last words.
Synchysis. Word order confusion within a sentence.
Syncope. The omission of letters from the middle of a word, usually replaced by an apostrophe.
Synecdoche. A rhetorical device where one part of an object is used to represent the whole. E.g., "There are fifty head of cattle." (Head is substituting for the whole animal). "Show a leg!" (naval command to get out of bed = show yourself)

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Tapinosis. Language or an epithet that is debasing. This term is synonymous with Meiosis (figure of speech).
Taste. A learned admiration for things of beauty.
Tautologia. The same idea repeated in different words.
Taxis. The distribution of a proper adjunct to every subject.
Techne. Greek for a true art.
Terministic screens. term coined by Kenneth Burke to explain the way in which the world is viewed when taking languages and words into consideration.
Theme. The central topic of discussion.
Thesis. The major claim or premise made in an argument to be proved or dis-proved.
Thesmos. Greek. The law that comes from the authority of kings.
Tone. The author's voice in an essay through use of figurative language or a style of enunciation in writing (also known as a diction). The way the author expresses himself out loud or through a character.
Topical systems. Methods for finding arguments.
Topographia. The description of a place.
Topothesia. The description of an imaginary or non-existent place.
Topos. A line or specific style of argument.
Toulmin Model. A method of diagramming arguments created by Stephen Toulmin that identifies such components as backing, claim, data, qualifier, rebuttal, and warrant.
Translative issue. Dealing with procedure of an ensuing case.
Tricolon. The pattern of three phrases in parallel, found commonly in Western writing after Cicero. For example, the kitten had white fur, blue eyes, and a pink tongue.
Trivium. (Latin) Grammar, rhetoric, and logic taught in schools during the medieval period.
Tropes. Figure of speech that uses a word aside from its literal meaning.

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Understatement. A form of irony, also called litotes, in which something is represented as less than it really is, with the intent of drawing attention to and emphasizing the opposite meaning.
Universal audience. An audience consisting of all humankind (most specifically of adult age and normal mental capacity).
Utterance. Statement that could contain meaning about one's own person.

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Validity. Apprehension over the structure of an argument.
Validity claim. Claiming to have made a correct statement.
Verba. Latin: The part of an argument that advances the subject matter.
Verba ex ore. Latin: Taking the words out of someone’s mouth, speaking of what the interlocutor wanted to say.[2]
Verbum volitans. Latin: A word that floats in the air, on which everyone is thinking and is just about to be imposed.[2]
Visual rhetoric. A theoretical framework describing how visual images communicate, as opposed to aural or verbal messages.
Vir bonus dicendi peritus. Latin: The good man skilled at speaking well.
Vita activa. A life lived in active involvement in the political arena.

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Warrant. term used by Stephen Toulmin to establish a link between data and a claim.
Ways and means. One of the five main matters that Aristotle claims political speakers make speeches on. It consists of the speaker's country's revenue and sources, as well as the expenditures of the country.

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text: Zeugma. From the Greek word "ζεύγμα", meaning "yoke". A figure of speech in which one word applies to two others in different senses of that word, and in some cases only logically applies to one of the other two words. This is a similar concept to syllepsis.