written version of the Communication presented to the Colloquium "Literary and philosophical rhetoric in Greek, Syriac and Arab worlds, Beirut (IFPO, Deutsche Orient Institut, Saint-Joseph University) 3-4 July 2006. The usual translation of balâgha (here for ILM al-Balâgha, roughly ‘science of efficiency’) by ‘rhetoric’ can be the best or worst thing. The worst, if we look at the balâgha what is etymologically rhetoric and was for centuries — an oratoireart — or what it eventually became — the rhetoric restricted to figures. The best, if it is an opportunity for comparison and confrontation. Moreover, such a comparison is necessary in the classic Muslim space, where there are two ‘rhetoric’ speeches: one, khatâba, is ‘one of the logical sciences’ and the other, the balâgha, is ‘one of the sciences of Arabic’, using the terminology of Ibn Khaldûn, m. 808/1416, in the Muqaddima: 2006 marking the 600th anniversary of his death, we will take the chapter he devotes in his great work to rhetoric as a reference text. Since Logic is part of the falsafa, the former is therefore referred to as a ‘philosophical’ rhetoric. In the first instance, he extended the Aristotle Rhétoric, presenting itself as a comment, but without repeating it, not least because the Islamic city was not the Greek city. Does it mean that the other, the balâgha, is referred to as a ‘literary’ rhetoric? The purpose of this contribution is twofold: on the one hand, give as brief a picture as possible of the balâgha in its final state; on the other hand, to show that, over time, balâgha will be increasingly integrated into the body of theological-legal disciplines in Islam, acting as a true ancillaris in relation to them. In particular, we will highlight its role in two areas: the well-known one in theology where it feeds the dogma of ‘i’jâz al-Qur’ân’ (‘inimitability of the Coran’); the less well known legal framework, where it constitutes the backbone of legal hermeneutics. For the sake of completeness, reference should also be made to the Balâgha/tafsîr intersection, which is the coranic comment of Zamakhshară (m. 538/1144) and which has not escaped Ibn Khaldûn.