Al-Balaghah ‘The Foundation of Eloquence’ (first published in 1998) is a thesaurus and dictionary of Arabic words. For each word, Al-Zamakhshari provided its meaning, some of its uses in the Quran, Muhammad's sayings, poetry, or proverbs. Furthermore, he represented and analyzed some uses of this word in figurative speech and provided contexts where it can be found in everyday language. The content of this text was organized alphabetically. This work was best known as the earliest fully alphabetical lexicography that combines literal definitions and metaphorical material. He excluded rare or borrowed words. His goal was to highlight that word choice can play a significant role in enhancing the rhetoric of a text or speech. Maqamat Al-Zamakhshari Maqamat Al-Zamakhshari ‘Al-Zamakhshari's Principles’ (first published in 1982) is a literary work. It began with an introduction praising God for all his blessings and asking readers to carefully read this book and understand the purpose behind the use of each word. Al-Zamakhshari then provided a religious sermon followed by his fifty principles. Those principles talked about different topics. Some of them were about generosity, seriousness, bravery, thanking, advice-giving, death, syntax, prosody, and the life of Arabs in the past. Assessments Some of the 7th and 8th centuries scholars have attributed different points of view to Al-Zamakhshari on different topics. However, some books and other historical pieces of evidence from the 7th century showed that some of these views attributed to him were not based on sound ground and that most judgments lacked supporting evidence. One of the competing claims about Al-Zamakhshari is his analysis of the co-occurrence of the interrogative prefix /Ɂ-/ with the conjunction words in Arabic, especially in Quranic verses. Interrogative particle al-hamza /Ɂ-/ In Arabic, the interrogative prefix /Ɂ-/ attaches to nominal and verbal sentences to form a yes/no question. Thus, it is used to check information and ask for confirmation or verification. Most of the time, it is prioritized in a sentence, so it may precede conjunction particles, prepositions, the complementizer [Ɂnna] and direct objects (in case of verbal sentences). Indeed, this prefix is viewed as the default interrogative in Arabic. However, other interrogative particles (which are used to ask yes/no questions or those similar to English wh-question words) usually follow conjunctions, namely [wa], [fa] and [θumma], as in: (فهل يهلك إلَا القوم الفاسقون) Fa hal yuhlaku illa Ɂal-qawm-u Ɂal-fasiqu:n CONJ. INTROG. destroy-PRES except DEF-people-NOM DEF-immoral “Shall any be destroyed