| Summary: | The primary goal of this paper is to read al-Fārābī's Kitāb al-shi'r [Book of poetry]1 between the lines. Though it touches upon his other treatises on poetry and poetics, i.e., Risāla fī qawānīn ṣinā'at al-shu'arā' [Essay on the rules of the art of the poets]2 and Qawl al-Fārābī fī al-tanāsub wa-l-ta'līf [al-Fārābī's saying on harmony and composition),3 it does so only in passing. Emphasizing the primacy of mimesis (muḥākat) in al-Fārābī's discussion of poetics, this paper demonstrates how poeticity (shi'riyya), according to al-Fārābī, goes beyond being a mere "textual" or "oral" quality to even encompass various human actions and activities. In doing so, it also underscores how al-Fārābī's definition(s) of mimesis is not reducible to comparison, simile, metaphor--or even the extended metaphor.
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