Islamic traditions

Metaphors conceptualizing anger represent a system which is based on the cognitive cultural model of this emotion. Since this model derives from the physiological effects and the behavioral reactions associated with anger, it may be used as a criterion to compare and contrast the conceptualization of this emotion in different contexts. This article analyzes the metaphorical expressions of anger in the Qur’anic verses and the traditions of the Holy Prophet and his rightful successors to determine to what extent they follow the aforementioned model offered by Kovecses. In doing so, a corpus of 200 verses and traditions were collected from different Islamic sources and then they were grouped according to seven source domains identified by Kovecses. The findings of the study reveal that except for one source domain, i.e. burden, the other seven source domains exhibit a high frequency in the above-mentioned verses and traditions; this, in turn, is indicative of the fact that there is a systematic conceptual motivation underlying the structures of the metaphorical expressions in these verses and traditions so that it can be claimed that such expressions follow a well-established scientific pattern.