Introduction: What Is Sehl-i Mümteni?

Sehl-i mümteni is made of two Arabic words. Sehl means "easy", and mümteni' means "that which cannot come to be". The literal meaning of the compound is "an ease that is all but impossible to attain".¹ As a literary term, it names the concise saying and expression that seems to have been said with ease, yet whose like is very hard to say. Its chief features are naturalness, brevity and clarity.