Al-'Ain fi Awakhir al-Abyat wa Atsaruha fi Tasykil al-Iqa' wa al-Huzn fi Qasidah "Khalilayya 'Uja 'Awjatan" li Dzi al-Rummah

This study aims to investigate the role of the phoneme /'ʿayn'/ occurring at the end of the verses in Dzū al-Rummah's poem Khalīlayya 'Ūjā 'Awjah in shaping its emotional rhythm through the interaction between semantic and phonological structures. The study employs a qualitative descriptive method using a semantic-stylistic approach based on the theory of the correspondence between words and meanings (at-Tanāsub bayna al-Alfāẓ wa al-Ma‘ānī), particularly Abd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī's concept of an-naẓm in Dalā'il al-I'jāz, supported by Ibn Jinnī's theory on the phonetic characteristics of Arabic sounds. The data consist of seventy-one verses of the poem analyzed through content analysis. The findings reveal that sadness is constructed on two semantic levels: literal meaning and figurative meaning. Literal sadness appears in verses that explicitly express grief, despair, and tears, whereas figurative sadness is conveyed through rhetorical devices such as interrogation, personification, and simile, which evoke longing, loneliness, and emotional suffering implicitly. Once the semantic structure is established, the phoneme /'ʿayn'/ in the rhyme position reinforces the poem's emotional rhythm through its distinctive acoustic qualities, intensifying the emotional impact of the text. Therefore, the phoneme /'ʿayn'/ does not independently generate the meaning of sadness but functions as a phonological element that strengthens the emotional expression already constructed by the poem's linguistic structure.