1. Introduction

In Conceptual Metaphor Theory studies, two important points are discussed in Kövecses (2010) about the larger conceptual metaphor systems in language. He believes that seemingly heterogeneous metaphors cluster around one metaphor system. Two of these metaphorical systems are the Great Chain of Being Metaphor and the Abstract Complex System. This paper aims to study these two systems in the Qur'an language.  

The great chain of being or the great pyramid of existence is "a kind of hierarchical ontological structure on which humans organized their thoughts and actions" (Etemadinia, 2016, p. 25). Accordingly, universe creatures, including humans, animals, plants, and matters, and in the highest position, God, have their special positions. These positions are related to and affected by each other, and the higher levels, simultaneously possessing idiosyncratic properties, include the features of the lower ones. Western, Eastern, and Islamic philosophers have studied this hierarchy and its implications for other realms of knowledge, like philosophy, psychology, religion, mysticism, etc., in different ways. Lovejoy (1936), for the first time, introduced the ontological framework that was dominant in ancient and medieval times in a book entitled The Great Chain of Being. The Great Chain of Being represents an ontological framework that categorizes all entities, ranging from inanimate objects to the divine, along a continuum of perfection. Lovejoy's principle of gradation pertains to the hierarchical arrangement of beings according to their degree of perfection. Kövecses (2010, p. 154) explains the Great Chain of Being as a hierarchy of entities that is organized from the top to the bottom.

This philosophical chain is used in CMT studies, since in language, there are metaphors like HUMAN AS ANIMAL (as well as HUMAN AS PLANT, ANIMAL AS HUMAN, etc.) through which an entity in the human level is represented as another entity in the animal level. All metaphors created in this way are called Great Chain of Being Metaphors; here we can call it GCBM. The folk theory of GCBM is "how things are related to each other in the world" (Kövecses, 2010, p. 154). The important point is that in this metaphor, the properties and behaviors of one thing are conceptualized as the properties and behaviors of another thing belonging to another level. For example, in "Tell me what you did with the money, you swine", swine as an animal is used to refer to a man. Therefore, the HUMAN AS ANIMAL metaphor emerges. This metaphor shows that an issue relevant to man, in one level of being, is understood through the properties of an animal (swine), in another level of being. A similar phenomenon occurs when we say, "Ali flourished when he came to this university". Here, the idea of the development of a man is understood through the flourishing of a flower, and the MAN AS A PLANT metaphor is evoked.

Moreover, religion is a complex abstract concept, and this complexity calls for metaphorical understanding. According to Kövecses (2010, p. 155), "The mind, economic systems, careers, social organizations, relationships, society, and a company are all target domains that fit into the concept of (abstract) complex systems. I suppose religion (as a set of ideas and rules about God, with participants who are believers and disbelievers in God) is a complex abstract system too, and like other complex abstract systems, can be conceptualized through source domains proposed by Kövecses (2010). "The properties of function, stability, development, and condition of abstract complex systems are primarily featured by four source domains: machine, building, plant, and human body, respectively" (Kövecses, 2010, p. 156). This metaphorical mapping creates an Abstract Complex System metaphor.

2. Statement of the Problem

Now, this paper attempts to place these two systems (i.e., GCBM and Abstract Complex System) within the context of the Qur'an language.

       The worldview of the Quran (that is, the Quran's perspective and evaluation regarding God, angels, humans, animals, plants, nature, inanimate objects, and all matters of existence is a phenomenon that is addressed in other academic and theological fields. However, since the mentioned concepts are presented in the form of language, linguistic theories have the potential to enter the discussion. In this regard, this article focuses on GCBM as it is represented in the language of the Qur'an. The first aim of this research is to examine the existential hierarchy in Qur'an based on the metaphorical representations of its beings. We want to see how the existing metaphors serve the religious ideology of the Qur'an by shifting the levels of beings (and their relevant behaviors and characteristics).

       Therefore, the first research question is whether such metaphorical representations (i.e., GCBM) have occurred in the Quran, as claimed by Conceptual Metaphor Theory, and whether they are consistent with it? And if so, how can all the seemingly unrelated metaphors be gathered under this conceptual cognitive mechanism, so that a coherent set of metaphors can be integrated? In other words, in the Holy Qur'an language, we face numerous metaphors in which one concept (belonging to existence parts or creatures) is produced and understood via another concept; for example, HUMAN AS ANIMAL in "These are as the cattle-nay, but they are worse!" (Al-A'raaf: 179). The cattle, as a metaphorical expression, denote a number of sinful, neglectful disbelievers here.

Another important issue regarding RELIGION as a general concept is the way religion (and its relevant subcategories like belief, resurrection, monotheism, justice, etc.) is conceptualized in the Qur'an text. If we suppose that religion is an abstract complex system, what source domains are used in its conceptualization? Though there are numerous categories of different metaphors extracted from the Holy Qur'an text, no investigation is reported about the general conceptualization of the religious system in this text. How (through which cognitive mechanism) is the religious system of the Qur'an conceptualized?

Therefore, this paper attempts to analyze the religious system governing the Qur'an from a more general and broader perspective than before, so that many micro-metaphors can be placed in a coherent and functional pattern. It is believed that discovering the general and comprehensive structure of the Qur'an metaphorical conceptualizations, not only the GCBM but also the Religion Complex System metaphor, will help us discover the totality of the Quran's meaning-making. In this way, we can go beyond the narrow space of minimal linguistic analyses towards the semantic flows of the Qur'an.

3. Review of the Related Literature

One of the fields dealing with abstract concepts is religion. There are different studies on the religious language metaphors. A number of them attempt to prove that the language of religion involves many metaphorical concepts. Therefore, they attempt to indicate the important role of metaphors in the perception of religious complexes and odd meanings. Harrison (2007, p. 3) believes that the oddity of religious language "is caused by the fact that language which purports to be about God inevitably involves words whose meaning would seem to derive from the world of our experience; whereas a world-transcendent God is not within the range of what we can experience." (Harrison, 2007, p. 130). Des Camp and Sweetser (2005, p. 215) have examined metaphors about God, proving that linguistic analysis of metaphor in the language of religion is preferable to other analyses. They asserted that "metaphor in religious revealed language functions the same way that metaphor in everyday language functions." Another example is Laurence Erussard (1997, pp. 198-200), who examines the cognitive metaphor “Disciples as Salt of the Earth”. In his view, every religion has root metaphors around which other metaphors are formed. For example, in the Gospel, the metaphor “God as love” is a primary metaphor. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Christ utters the famous phrase: “You are the salt of the earth.” The author believes that Jesus Christ used metaphorical language to show the importance of the Disciples’ role on earth.

Other studies have a broader perspective on metaphors of religion. Jäkel (2002, pp. 22-23) believes that by "relying on this theoretical framework, we can make certain predictions about the occurrence, frequency, and centrality of linguistic metaphors in discourse or texts dealing with religious issues". Mohamed Shokr Abdulmoneim (2006) is concerned with applying the cognitive linguistic view of metaphor theory to the Qur’an. The overall aim of his paper is to prove the linguistic creativity of the Qur’an through applying the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor to religious metaphor. He studies the LIFE AS JOURNEY metaphor in the Holy Qur'an. It can be observed that these investigations concentrated on the specific issues of metaphor identification, or its important function in religious discourse.

Some other researchers have focused on the classification and analysis of metaphors in the Qur'an and other Islamic religious texts. Pourebrahim (2009) in her dissertation found that there are three types of structural (e.g., JOURNEY, HUMAN BODY, etc.), orientational (e.g., up/down, front/behind, far/near), and ontological (e.g., entity /substance, containment, personification) metaphors in the Qur'an language. Houshangi and Seifi Pargu (2009) examined the interrelationship of fundamental conceptual domains such as plants, water, soil, and wind to shed light on some of the systematicity of conceptual metaphors in the Holy Qur'an. Hajian and Kambuziyā (2010) and Yegane and Afrashi (2016) examined the orientational metaphors from a Cognitive Approach. Ghaeminia (2011) has studied conceptual metaphor, radial networks, prototypes, mental spaces, dynamic structure, conceptual integration, and causality. Movaẓebi et al. (2023) analysed the relation of POSSESSION in the Holy Qur'an based on CMT. Talebi Anvari et al. (2018) allocated the resemblance-based metaphors to the Great Chain of Being. Moreover, conceptual metaphors and Qur'an spaces is a work performed by Ghaeminia (2017) that discusses different subjects of the Qur'an, including the idea of the Great Chain of Being Metaphor. Ghaemi and Zolfaghari (2022)studied the function of plantification in objectifying the concept of "life" in the text of the Quran and Nahj al-Balaghah. Finally, Sharifi Moghadam et al. (2021) conducted a cognitive Analysis of the concepts of “Divine Anger and worldly Punishment”.

Some researchers studied other aspects of metaphor, like image schemas. For example, Taheri & Alvandi (2013) found that by using the image-schemata, conceptual metaphors transmit the meaningfulness to the religious representations. Ghaemi and Zolfaghari (2016) studied image schemas in worldly and otherworldly life in the Qur'an Language. Karimi Borojeni et al. (2018) studied the representation of force schema in the ethical and religious propositions.

In the above studies, the overall systematicity of religion as an abstract complex system has been neglected. The present study can help us to distance ourselves from micro-analyses of the metaphorical concepts of the Qur'an. Therefore, through a more general and comprehensive perspective, we can examine the Qur'anic concepts, connections, and systematicity. In this study, we place the Qur'anic metaphors that have been extracted and examined in the previous studies under a new classification under these two systems to arrive at the general flow of Qur'anic metaphors.

What distinguishes this analysis from the previous ones is the attempt to achieve more general ideas about Qur'anic concepts, their formation, and their relationship to the goals of the Qur'anic message. In the previous studies, as mentioned before, the focus has been mostly on the types of metaphors in the language of the Qur'an. They show some aspects of meaning construction, but lack the comprehensiveness and generality of conceptualizations in the language of the Qur'an.

4.    Theoretical Framework and Research Method

The new approach to metaphor, which challenges some aspects of the traditional view in a coherent and systematic way, was first formulated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's (1980) influential work Metaphors We Live By. Their approach became known as the "Cognitive or Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Lakoff and Johnson (1980) claimed that metaphor is a property of concepts, not words, and that the function of metaphor is to better understand specific concepts, not for artistic or aesthetic purposes. Metaphor is often not based on similarity; it is used effortlessly by ordinary people in their daily lives, and is not peculiar to specially gifted individuals, and finally, metaphor is not just a fancy and at the same time enjoyable linguistic ornament, but an inevitable process of human thought and reasoning.

Regarding the basis of metaphor formation, cognitive theory believes that it is a relationship between concepts that is based on experiential/cultural co-occurrences in the external world and the perceived similarities between sources and targets. For example, in real human experiences, "in our everyday experience, a correlation between quantity or amount and verticality" occurs (Kövecses, 2010, p. 80). When the quantity or amount of something increases, its verticality or height also increases. This co-occurrence of volume and height gives rise to the MORE IS UP metaphor. In the case of resemblance-based metaphor, this example suffices: I’ll take my chances. According to Kövecses (2010, p. 82), this metaphorical expression represents LIFE IS A GAMBLING GAME, whose foundation is the perceived (or real) structural similarity between LIFE and GAMBLING concepts.

Kövecses (2010, p. 149) raised an important question, which is the focus of attention in Qur'an metaphors here, namely, "whether the conceptual metaphors themselves form even larger systems? Whether the conceptual metaphors are isolated from each other, or they fit together to make up larger systematic groupings? That is, metaphor systems that incorporate individual conceptual metaphors". In response to this question, metaphorical systems were the Complex System Metaphor and THE EVENT STRUCTURE Metaphor. The former deals with how objects or things in the world are conceptualized in the form of metaphors; while the latter says how events are understood metaphorically (Kövecses, 2010, p. 166). The task of conceptualizing all objects and relationships in general falls to these two types of metaphorical systems. In this paper, I will concentrate on the first metaphor and its subpart.

In the Great Chain of Being, including humans, animals, plants, complex objects, and natural physical objects, humans have higher-order properties and behaviors (such as thinking and personality), animals have instinctive properties and behaviors, plants have biological properties, complex objects have structural properties and functional behaviors, and natural physical objects have natural physical properties and natural physical behavior. Based on this hierarchy, entities and their corresponding concepts are structured from top to bottom.

In Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, George Lakoff (1987) states that the Great Chain of Being is a cultural model that views the types of beings and their characteristics and places them on a vertical scale, with some beings and their characteristics at the top and others at the bottom. When we speak of the “higher or superior” faculties of man, we mean the aesthetic and moral faculties and the capacity for human reason and reasoning, not physical characteristics, animal desires, or raw emotions. We are talking about higher and lower forms of life. The Great Chain is a scale of forms of beings—human, animal, plant, and inanimate objects—and, consequently, a measure of the defining and descriptive characteristics of beings, such as intelligence, instinctive behavior, biological roles, physical traits, and so on (Lakoff, 1987, pp. 166-167). This chain has been transformed into a "great extended chain" in Lakoff and Turner (1989), with the world and society placed above man, and thus includes God, the world/universe, society, humans, animals, etc., in that order. "Lakoff and Turner's 'Basic Great Chain' looks like this:

The Great Chain of Being

Humans: higher-order attributes and behavior (e.g., thought, character)

Animals: instinctual attributes and behavior

Plants: biological attributes and behavior

Complex objects: structural attributes and functional behavior

Natural physical things: natural physical attributes and natural physical behavior" (Kövecses, 2010, p. 154)

When a particular level of the chain (human, animal, etc.) is used to understand another level, a metaphorical system is created. The orientation of this process may be from a lower source to a higher target or from a higher source to a lower target (Kövecses, 2010, p. 154). In Persian, when we say, "He is a lizard," we move from the higher target of "human" to the lower source of "animal".

Within this metaphor system, there exists another metaphor, called the Complex System Metaphor. "The mind, economic systems, careers, social organizations, relationships, society, and a company are all target domains that fit into the concept of (abstract) complex systems" (Kövecses, 2010, p. 155). The properties of function, stability, development, and condition of abstract complex systems are primarily featured by four source domains: MACHINE, BUILDING, PLANT, and HUMAN BODY, respectively. In other words, for conceptualizing complex systems like "culture" in Persian (when we say: "in the heart of our culture"), the target domain of the HUMAN BODY has been used.

This article aims to see how religion as a complex system is conceptualized in the Qur'an. The data presented and discussed here are conceptual metaphors of the previous studies. These metaphors are categorized into two groups, each of which belongs to the metaphor systems of GCBM and Abstract Complex Systems. English translations of verses by Pickthall are taken from the ParsQuran website. Among other English Translations, this seems to be a more literal translation that keeps the metaphors relatively unchanged in the target language.

5. Results

It is necessary to mention two important facts about Qur'anic concepts. Firstly, the religious conceptual system is a binary one, and secondly, this system is complex. In the Qur'an, there is a binary system of God / Non-God that governs the whole instructions and teachings. The concepts like good/bad, mercy/wrath, forgiveness/punishment, guidance/misguidance, etc., follow this binary pattern. On the other hand, the Qur'an's contents relevant to human life, his beliefs, and communication in society, are abstract and complex concepts. These complex ideas must be reduced to less complex and more understandable concepts via conceptual metaphors.    5.1.   Great Chain of Being Metaphor in the Qur'an LanguageAccording to the Qur'an, God is metaphorically conceptualized as the Highest, the Supreme, and the Dominant existence: 1- "He it is Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days; then He mounted the Throne. … and He is with you wheresoever ye may be..."  (Hadid: 4).2- "He directeth the ordinance from the heaven unto the earth; then it ascendeth unto Him in a Day, whereof the measure is a thousand years of that ye reckon." (Sajdeh: 5).3- "He is the Omnipotent over His slaves." ('An'aam: 18, 61). Angels, though, are abstract entities, conceptualized as concrete animate creatures who praise Allah and obey His orders. The same conceptualization happens to angels (or malaa'ikah). They are conceptualized as being around the Throne of God; therefore, they are "muqarribun": 4- "And thou (O Muhammad) seest the angels thronging round the Throne, hymning the praises of their Lord." (Zomar: 75).And the status of humans is over other creatures, like animals and objects, intrinsically. The following verse shows the real value of humans in the Holy Qur'an. Humans (Children of Adam) are near to the Lord and preferred over many other creatures: 5- "Those unto whom they cry seek the way of approach to their Lord, which of them shall be the nearest." ('Asraa: 57). 6- "Verily we have honoured the Children of Adam. We carry them on the land and the sea, and have made provision of good things for them, and have preferred them above many of those whom We created with a marked preferment." ('Asraa :70).However, though they are conceptualized over other creatures, humans are divided into two groups: believers and ignorant or unbelievers. Besides explicit description of both groups, the Qur'an language shows some metaphorical representations, such as animalization. This metaphorical process shows ignorant degradation into a lower status than animals. It is observed that in some verses, the UNBELIEVER HUMAN AS ANIMAL metaphor occurs, through which the human degrades into lower levels of creation dramatically. In this type of Qur'an verse, the level of generality decreases, and more specific mental constructs of the animal domain (like dog, ape, swine, etc.) are selected as the target:

• "These are as the cattle-nay, but they are worse! These are the neglectful." ('A'raaf: 179).

2- "Therefore, his likeness is as the likeness of a dog ..." ('A'raaf: 176).   

3- "… him on whom His wrath hath fallen and of whose sort Allah hath turned some to apes and swine, and who serveth idols." (Maa'ida: 60).

4- "And ye know of those of you, who broke the Sabbath, how We said unto them: Be ye apes, despised and hated!" (Baqarah: 65).

5- "As they were frightened asses, fleeing from a lion?" (Moddathir: 50-51).

6- "The likeness of those who are entrusted with the Law of Moses, yet apply it not, is as the likeness of the ass carrying books. Wretched is the likeness of folk who deny the revelations of Allah. And Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk." (Jom'ah: 5). 

Therefore, animals are depicted as lower–level creatures, and ignorant unbelievers are conceptualized beneath them.

Orientational metaphors complete the role of these metaphors. How? Through placing these entities above or below each other, and giving them their status and values. Therefore, it is observed that God is the most valuable, the almightiest, so He has the most exalted position. No one or anything can reach that position. Believers are in the rank of humans, who are closer to God, and then there are animals, and lower than animals, there are disobedient people who are rejected from God's door:

7- "And had We willed We could have raised him by their means, but he clung to the earth and followed his own lust. Therefor his likeness is as the likeness of a dog: if thou attackest him he panteth with his tongue out, and if thou leavest him he panteth with his tongue out. Such is the likeness of the people who deny Our revelations." ('A'raaf: 176)

Therefore, ontological, structural, and orientational metaphors have some sort of interaction in representing the Great Chain of Being Metaphor in the Qur'an language. They conceptualize non-object concepts as objects. Then, by metaphorically promoting and demoting, rising and falling, descending and ascending them, orientational metaphor’s function. DISBELIEVER AS DOG/APE/PIG is a sub-metaphor of UNBELIEVER (HUMAN) AS ANIMAL.

Going away from God's position or approaching it occurs in the vertical axis of the being hierarchy; therefore, orientational metaphors of the Holy Qur'an function in the same alignment, that is, God is depicted in the topmost position and the highest value, and non-God is in the lowest place, without any special value. The approach to the top can upgrade non-Gods. This upgrading is only possible for men because all other existing entities, even angels, are stable in their determined positions. Humans can rise to the position of God or fall to the lowest level of animals and things. The Only God is thought to have a stable, supreme position, and other beings, due to their inherent and instinctive creation, cannot change their position. Man is capable of being placed in different ranks, since he is the only kind that has choice and freedom, technically called "ekhtiar". It can be claimed that the whole mission of the Qur'an (and perhaps, all holy books and religions) is to metaphorically guide man toward the top of the pyramid of being, toward God, and to approach its top. This metaphorical upward/downward movement to/away from God is depicted in many literary and mystical works, though a central peripheral dimension is also added to the movement, creating central–peripheral orientational metaphors.     In the Qur'an, humans are evaluated on the basis of their belief to God. As if, in a spatial classification, God places the believer higher than the unbeliever and closer to Himself, because belief is more valued and disbelief is just the opposite, and are placed at the top and down, respectively. 1- "I am setting those who follow thee above those who disbelieve until the Day of Resurrection." ('Aalī-'īmraan: 55).2- "Lo! the hypocrites (will be) in the lowest deep of the Fire, and thou wilt find no helper for them." (Nisaaa': 145). In addition, God's Ayahs are placed above and sent downward to humans:3-"And when it is said unto them: Come unto(ta'aalaw) that which Allah hath revealed and unto the messenger, thou seest the hypocrites turn from thee with aversion." (Nisaa': 61).In this verse, the word "ta'aalaw is the imperative of al-ta'aali (to rise)" (Al-Ṭabaṭaba'ī , 2020, vol. 4, p. 253), which means to come in an upward direction. Finally, in the Qur'an, expressions referring to the holy books of the Bible, Torah, and Qur'an, as well as those which denote signs of God, miracles, and angels, are used with the verb "'anzala", meaning "sending down". This metaphorical use of the word at first creates the impression that these abstract entities are embodied and that they are sent from a high position to mankind, who is in a much lower position: 4- "Say: O People of the Scripture! Do ye blame us for aught else than that we believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto ('unzila) us and that which was revealed ('unzila) aforetime, and because most of you are evil-livers?" (Maa'ida: 59). 

• Religion Complex System and its source concepts

Religion can be considered as a spiritual, human, and social system with the features of a complex system, that is, function, stability, development, and condition of the system. Kövecses (2010, p. 161) states that abstract complex systems are largely understood in terms of four metaphors: AN ABSTRACT COMPLEX SYSTEM IS THE HUMAN BODY, AN ABSTRACT COMPLEX SYSTEM IS A BUILDING, AN ABSTRACT COMPLEX SYSTEM IS A MACHINE, and AN ABSTRACT COMPLEX SYSTEM IS A PLANT. If we assume that religion is a complex epistemic abstract system, then, according to the Necessity principle, it should be understood via other concepts. The evidences show that the source concepts, used in the conceptualization of different aspects of religion, are BODY PARTS, PLANTS, and BUILDING, and their functions and parts.

• HUMAN BODY

In Qur'an language, human body parts including eye, ears, hands, feet, and mouth, as well as their functions are used as the experiential basis for the creation of many religion metaphors. "dīn" or "shari'a" is the straight path, so religion, metaphorically, entails human body movement in the path and this evokes the SOURCE-PATH-GOAL schema. Life is a journey on this path whose destination is GOD (and His relevant issues like heaven, hell, happiness, hereafter living, etc.); LIFE IS MOVEMENT PATH, and men's movement is either toward God or devoted to no- God destinations. The former prompts "hidaya" or guidance, and the latter "ẓilalah" or deviation. Therefore, the HIDAYA/ ẒILALAH metaphor is conceptualized as the body movement in a direct or indirect path, which leads to many other relevant sub-metaphors and mappings.

In a complex religious system, mapping originates in the function of human body parts. The features of these sources are projected onto the various target concepts of the religion domain. Eye metaphors are considerable metaphors in the Holy Qur'an: KNOWING AS SEEING, GOD SIGNS AS VISIBLE THINGS, GUIDANCE AS SHOWING, KNOWING TOOLS AS THE LIGHT SOURCE, KNOWING CAPABILITY AS THE SEEING ABILITY, and PAYING ATTENTION AS LOOKING. These metaphorical mappings are the basis of many Qur'anic meanings:

• "Allah is the Protecting Guardian of those who believe. He bringeth them out of darkness into light. As for those who disbelieve, their patrons are false deities. They bring them out of light into darkness. Such are rightful owners of the Fire. They will abide therein."(Baqarah: 257).
• "He bringeth them out of darkness unto light by His decree, and guideth them unto a straight path." (Maa'īdah: 16).

Other metaphors of the same category are: IGNORANCE IS BLINDNESS and KNOWING BARRIERS ARE SEEING OBSTACLES. In these metaphors, the features of a blind person are projected onto an ignorant person:

• "They thought no harm would come of it, so they were willfully blind and deaf. And afterward Allah turned (in mercy) toward them. Now (even after that) are many of them willfully blind and deaf. Allah is Seer of what they do." (Maa'īdah: 71).
• "Their likeness is as the likeness of one who kindleth fire, and when it sheddeth its light around him Allah taketh away their light and leaveth them in darkness, where they cannot " (Baqarah: 17).
• "And of them is he who looketh toward thee. But canst thou guide the blind even though they see not?" (Yuunus: 43).

In the same way, the ear, as a significant perceptual organ, and its function, that is, hearing, act as an influential source domain in constructing the meanings of the religious system. These metaphorical concepts include: KNOWING AS HEARING, IGNORANCE AS DEAFNESS, OBEDIENCE / ACCEPTANCE AS LISTENING, GOD SIGNS AS AUDIBLE THINGS, GUIDING SOMEBODY AS MAKING SOMEBODY LISTENED, PAYING ATTENTION AS LISTENING, KNOWING OBSTACLES AS LISTENING BARRIERS. The following verses include some of these metaphorical expressions:

• "Only those can accept who hear." ('An'aam: 36).
• "Those who deny Our revelations are deaf and dumb in darkness. Whom Allah will sendeth astray, and whom He will He placeth on a straight path." ('An'aam: 36).
• "Be not as those who say, we hear, and they hear not." ('Anfaal: 21).

Mouth, eating, and other relevant meaning components are used as source domains of Qur'anic metaphors. Especially, POSSESSION OF OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTIES AS EATING THEM, and PROPERTIES AS FOOD, EXPLOITING AS EATING are among this class of metaphors:

• "And when it was said unto them: Dwell in this township and eat therefrom." (A'raaf: 161).
• "And give unto the women (whom ye marry) free gift of their marriage portions; but if they of their own accord remit unto you a part thereof, then ye are welcome to absorb it (in your wealth)." (Nisaa': 4).

Moreover, TORTURING AS FEEDING, and TORTURE AS FOOD are observed in some verses:

• "Then will it be said unto those who dealt unjustly Taste the torment of eternity. Are ye requited aught save what ye used to earn?" (Yuunus: 52).
• "Say: He is able to send punishment upon you from above you or from beneath your feet, or to bewilder you with dissension and make you taste the tyranny one of another." ('An'aam: 65).

Hands, feet, and their various biological functions have been used as the experiential base of many religious metaphorical mappings. Concepts like GENEROSITY/STINGINESS, ABILITY/DISABILITY, ACT, OBLIGATION, SELECTION, CAPTIVITY, OBEDIENCE, COMMAND AND DECREE, etc., can be conceptualized through the hand source domain and its actions like taking, grasping, keeping things, and writing. These verses represent them clearly:

• "In Thy hand is the good. Lo! Thou art Able to do all things." ('Aali-Imraan: 26).
• "As for those who believe in Allah, and hold fast unto Him, them He will cause to enter into His mercy and grace." (Nisaa': 175).
• "But (unto every messenger) they gave the lie, and so We seized them on account of what they used to earn." (A'raaf: 96).
• "Say: Naught befalleth us save that which Allah hath decreed (kataba) for us." (Tawbah: 51).

Main body postures of sitting and standing are productive source domains of Qur'an conceptualizations of weakness, malpractice (as sitting), and determination, especially in doing religious acts, mastery, dominance, stability of action, and jihad (as standing).

• "O ye who believe! When ye rise up for prayer, wash you faces, and your hands up to the elbows." (Maa'idah: 6).
• "So tread thou the straight path (fastaqim) as thou art commanded" (Huud: 112).
• "And if they had wished to go forth they would assuredly have made ready some equipment, but Allah was averse to their being sent forth and held them back and it was said (unto them): Sit ye with the sedentary!" (Tawbah: 46).
• "Those of the believers who sit still, other than those who have a (disabling) hurt, are not on an equality with those who strive in the way of Allah with their wealth and lives. Allah hath conferred on those who strive with their wealth and lives a rank above the sedentary. Unto each Allah hath promised good, but He hath bestowed on those who strive a great reward above the " (Nisaa': 95).

A general look at the evidence presented above leads to the fact that different concepts in the Islamic discourse of the Qur'an are produced and understood via human body concepts. Further investigations will be helpful to statistically show the exact details of these mappings, though it is clear that the human body is a very common conceptual domain in providing the source of metaphors.

• PLANT

The second source domain used in the conceptualization of the religion system is PLANT, including the components of plant growth, flourishing, drying, destruction, etc. These familiar human experiences are used in the Holy Qur'an's meaning construction. Therefore, RELIGION COMPLEX SYSTEM AS PLANT enables mental access to Qur'an religious ideas. HUMAN AS PLANT, and CREATION AS GROWING PLANTS:

• "And Allah hath caused you to grow as a growth from the earth." (Nuuḥ: 17).

Ghaemi and Zolfaghari (2022) studied the function of plantification in objectifying the concept of "life" in the text of the Qur'an and Nahj al-Balaghah. The data in this paragraph are derived from their study. DONATION ('INFAQ) AS PLANTING, LIFE AS PLANTING, DONATION AS PLANTING GOOD SEED IN THE GROUND, and THE WORLD AS A FIELD are observed in the following metaphorical expressions:

• "Whoso desireth the harvest of the Hereafter, We give him increase in its harvest. And whoso desireth the harvest of the world, We give him thereof, and he hath no portion in the Hereafter." (Shawraa: 20).
• "The likeness of those who spend their wealth in Allah's way is as the likeness of a grain which groweth seven ears, in every ear a hundred grains. Allah giveth increase manifold to whom He will." (Baqarah: 261).
• "And the likeness of those who spend their wealth in search of Allah's pleasure, and for the strengthening of their souls, is as the likeness of a garden on a height. The rainstorm smiteth it and it bringeth forth its fruit And if the rainstorm smite it not, then the shower. Allah is Seer of what ye do." (Baqarah: 261).
• The likeness of that which they spend in this life of the world is as the likeness of a biting, icy wind which smiteth the harvest of a people who have wronged themselves, and devastateth it. Allah wronged them not, but they do wrong themselves." ('Aali-Imraan: 117).

Here, donation, technically called 'infaaq, is in the religious domain, and emerges as planting. In addition, HUMAN CREATION AS PLANTING is seen in the following verses:

• "And Allah hath caused you to grow as a growth from the earth. And afterward He maketh you return thereto, and He will bring you forth again, a (new) forthbringing." (Nuuḥ: 17-18).

Other metaphors of this section are quoted from Talebi Anvari et al. (2018), under the title of resemblance metaphors with PLANT source: BELIEVERS AS PLANTS/THE COMPANIONS OF THE PROPHET AS GROWN SEEDS can be seen in the following verse:

• "Such is their likeness in the Torah and their likeness in the Gospel - like as sown corn that sendeth forth its shoot and strengtheneth it and riseth firm upon its stalk, delighting the sowers - that He may enrage the disbelievers with (the sight of) them." (Fatḥ: 29).

WOMEN AS FIELD is another plantification example:

• "Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) …" (Baqarah: 223).

 Another metaphor is 'AAD PEOPLE AS UPROOTED PALM TREES emerged in this verse:

• "Sweeping men away as though they were uprooted trunks of palm-trees." (Qamar: 20)

'AAD PEOPLE AS ROTTEN PALM TREES is another metaphor:

• "Which He imposed on them for seven long nights and eight long days so that thou mightiest have seen men lying overthrown, as they were hollow trunks of palm-trees." (Ḥaaqqah: 7).

THAMUD PEOPLE AS DRY TWIGS is used in the verse:

• "Lo! We sent upon them one Shout, and they became as the dry twigs (rejected by) the builder of a cattle-fold." (Qamar: 31).

The last example is a very specific metaphor: THE COMPANIONS OF THE ELEPHANT AS GREEN CROPS DEVOURED BY CATTLES:

• "And made them like green crops devoured (by cattle)?" (Fīl: 5)

The latter examples include very specific metaphors that are evoked by the narrative spaces of the Qur'an stories.

• BUILDING

In the Qur'an language, in addition to the human body and plants, the concepts in the realm of building (as a product and process) are used in the construction of some religious concepts. For example, in the following verse, the hereafter is evoked as a house:

• "Peace be unto you because ye persevered. Ah, passing sweet will be the sequel of the (heavenly) Home." (Ra'd: 24).

The concept of "daar" or house or home maps onto a religious temporal event after the death as if that event is a permanent place or house for living in, as opposed to pre-death life, which is a transient abode. In another verse, piety, or taqvaa, is beautifully represented as the solid, strong foundation of life and the world. On the contrary, the oppressor unbeliever builds the foundation of his house on an undermined sand-cliff, ready to crumble into the fire of hell.

• "Is he who founded his building upon duty to Allah and His good pleasure better; or he who founded his building on the brink of a crumbling, overhanging precipice so that it toppled with him into the fire of hell?" (Tawbah: 109).

The same process occurs in another Qur'anic metaphorical expression:

• "Those before them did also plot (against Allah's Way): but Allah took their structures from their foundations, and the roof fell down on them from above; and the Wrath seized them from directions they did not perceive." (Naḥl: 26).

Here, the metaphor is: LIFE AS A HOUSE WHOSE FOUNDATION IS DESTROYED BY DEATH. In another example, the believers and fighters for God are conceptualized as a solid, cemented structure:

• "Truly Allah loves those who fight in His Cause in battle array, as if they were a solid cemented structure." (Ṣaff: 4).

In another verse, Munafiqun are described:

• "as (worthless as hollow) pieces of timber propped up, (unable to stand on their own)." (Munafiqun: 4).

 In the final evidence, THE FLAMES AS PALACE is used:

• "Lo! it throweth up sparks like the " (Mursīlat: 32).

The instability of the play of the world and the permanence of the house of the hereafter exploit two levels of human affairs and objects to contrast the world and the hereafter:

• "Naught is the life of the world save a pastime (la'ib-un) and a spot (lahv-un). Better far is the abode (daar) of the Hereafter for those who keep their duty (to Allah). Have ye then no sense?" ('An'aam: 32).
• "The life of the world is but a sport (la'ib-un) and a pastime (lahv-un)." (Muḥammad: 36).
• 
  "This life of the world is but a pastime(lahv-un) and a game(la'ib-un). Lo! the home of the Hereafter - that is Life, if they but knew." ('Ankabuut: 64).

  To refer to transient worldly life, the Qur'an language conceptualizes it as goods or possessions; the goods that have little value and are not permanent:

• "Whereas the life of the world is but brief comfort (mataa') as compared with the Hereafter." (Ra'd: 26).

The structural metaphors LIFE AS PLAY AND GAME, HEREAFTER LIFE AS HOUSE, WORLDLY LIFE AS VALUELESS GOODS, are metaphors that can be included under the category of COMPLEX SYSTEM metaphors.

6. Discussion and Conclusion

What confirms the metaphorical conceptualization and relationship of entities in the Qur'an is the frequent explanations of the Qur'an commentators who point out that the literal meanings of the metaphorical foci are not intended. For example, in Tafseere Nemune, the meaning of the word"'inzal" is stated as follows:" It is clear that the interpreting "nozuul" (descending) "'inzal" (sending down) of the Holy Qur'an does not mean that the Only God has a place in the heavens and has sent down the Qur'an from that place, but this interpretation refers to the exaltation of God's position and spirituality." (Makarim Shirazi, 1974-6, vol. 1, p. 368)

From the evidence presented in 5-1, it can be observed that GCBM in Qur'an language depicts the same relationship between existing creatures of the world as ordinary non-religious languages; that is, GOD, ANGELS, HUMAN, ANIMALS are conceptualized along with a vertical axis from top to bottom. However, the relationship between Man and God is highlighted in the Qur'an. The most powerful and influential element is God, so human behaviors and traits are evaluated metaphorically in relation to God's position. Among other non-God entities, what is important and is focused on is the man who, by his discretion, can ascend to higher positions or sink to the bottom of lower levels. In the evidence presented above, animalization of disbelievers is highlighted (See Figure 1):

Figure 1. Human Animalization in GCBM of Qur'an

Therefore, GCBM in the Qur'an includes God, Angels, Mankind, and Animals. Moreover, when reviewing the evidence above, one can easily find that the Qur'an's system of conceptual metaphors, which aim at expressing religious messages, represents an abstract system. This complex system illustrates the value of creatures, phenomena, beliefs from a religious point of view, and mostly, with respect to the Human-God relation. Aligned with these values, the beings are categorized from God to the animals (either literally or metaphorically). To conceptualize human and his behaviour, which is emphasized in the Qur'an, human either is upgraded to a rank close to God, or degraded to the animal status.

In this network of values, all relations are systematic and coordinated. In the same way, religious phenomena, like resurrection, are conceptualized either as movement toward a destination through embodiment. Sometimes the same concept, resurrection, is depicted as a house or a field in which the world's agricultural products are reaped. Therefore, the purpose of the Qur'an is to represent religious abstract concepts by experiential or cultural sources like the body, plants, and building. It is illustrated in Figure 2:

Figure 2. Religious Complex Metaphor in the Qur'an language

On one side of metaphorical relations, there are religious targets which should be channeled through language and reconstructed in the mind of audiences, and on the other side, there are sources which are available and can be easily accessed by the human mind. Qur'an, by using these metaphors, can introduce the complex system of religion in a way that can be easily understood by humans. The mappings of mental constructs of sources and targets are sometimes very schematic, like conceptualizing humans as an object in the existence container. In these types of image-schematic metaphors, no contextual implications or descriptive details can be found.

These mappings, from a mult-level view proposed by Kövecses (2020), may connect two detailed mental constructs, i.e., frames or spaces, like 'AAD PEOPLE AS UPROOTED PALM TREES.  In the first category of metaphors, the audience can understand the metaphor without relying on the context. In contrast, in more specific metaphors, the reader must gain knowledge of the real world or the narrative world of the 'Aad People. Table 1 summerizes religious complex metaphors in the Holy Qur'an. It seems that a more comprehensive investigation can be proposed for discovering the Qur'an's meaning from a cognitive perspective.  

Table1. Some Religious Complex Metaphors in the Qur'an Language