Tafsīr and Islamic Intellectual History (Book report)

The title is a book in the Quranic field, edited by Andreas Görke and Johanna Pink, published by Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies as one of the Qur'anic Studies Series. The following is a report of the book.

Overview

• The volume offers the only up-to-date survey of scholarship on tafsīr as a genre and its place within the broader framework of Muslim scholarship.

• It represents the first attempt at analysing the fields in which Muslim exegetical activity takes place, its relation to other fields of learning and the conditions that influence the results of exegesis.

• It includes chapters by many leading experts in the field of tafsīr study.

Description

How and when did Qur'anic exegesis (tafsīr) emerge as a literary genre of its own? To what extent was it influenced by other disciplines, such as law, theology or philosophy? How did different political or theological agendas shape works of tafsīr, and in what ways did the genre develop over time and in different regions? These are some of the major questions which this book seeks to address.

This book constitutes the first comprehensive attempt at describing the genre of Qur'anic exegesis in its broader intellectual context. Its aim is to provide a framework for understanding the boundaries of tafsīr and its interaction with other disciplines of learning, as well as the subgenres and internal divisions within the genre. It discusses the emergence of the genre in the beginnings of Islamic history and the changes and potential ruptures it has experienced in later times, the role of hadith, law, language, philosophy, theology and political ideology for the interpretive process, the regional dimension, the influx of modernist ideas and the process of writing tafs?r in languages other than Arabic.

Among the fifteen authors who have contributed to the volume are leading scholars in the field as well as young researchers, which makes for a unique and fresh perspective on a field that has long been reduced to its instrumental value for understanding the Qur'an. Covering the time from the formation of Qur'anic exegesis until the present, it is a valuable resource for advanced students and scholars in the field.

Table of Contents Introduction, Johanna Pink and Andreas Görke

I: The Formation of Boundaries: Early Evolution of the Genre

1:Eve in the Formative Period of Islamic Exegesis: Intertextual Boundaries and Hermeneutic Demarcations, Catherine Bronson

2:Mujāhid's Exegesis: Beginnings, Ways of Transmission and Development of a Meccan Exegetical Tradition in its Human, Spiritual and Theological Environment, Claude Gilliot

3:The Qur'anic Commentary of Muqātil b. Sulaymān and the Evolution of Early Tafsīr Literature, Nicolai Sinai

II: Disciplinary Boundaries and their Permeation: The Place of Tafsīr in Islamic Scholarship

4:Interrelations and Boundaries between Tafsīr and Hadith Literature: The Exegesis of Mālik b. Anas' Muwaṭṭa? and Classical Qur'anic Commentaries, Roberto Tottoli

5:Shāfi"ī Hemeneutics and Qur'anic Interpretation in al-Jāḥi.z's Kitāb al-"Uthmāniyya, Ignacio Sánchez

6:Tafsīr between Law and Exegesis: The Case of Q. 49:9, Rebecca Sauer

III: Boundaries of Dogma and Theology: The Expression of Ideas through Tafsīr

7:Al-Jurjānī: Exegesis Theory between Linguistics and Theological Dogma, Nejmeddine Khalfallah

8:Interpretation and Reasoning in al-Qāḍī "Abd al-Jabbār's Qur'anic Hermeneutics, Abdessamad Belhaj

9:Tafsīr and The Mythology of Islamic Fundamentalism, Neguin Yavari

IV: Reassessing Conventional Boundaries: Chronology, Geography, Media and Authorship

10:Where Does Modernity Begin? Muḥammad al-Shawkānī and the Tradition of Tafsīr, Johanna Pink

11:Redefining the Borders of Tafsīr: Oral Exegesis, Lay Exegesis and Regional Particularities, Andreas Görke

12:Tafsīr and the Intellectual History of Islam in West Africa, Andrea Brigagli

V: An Expansion of Boundaries: The Tafsīr Tradition in Modern Times

13:Two Twentieth-century Exegetes between Traditional Scholarship and Modern Thought: Gender Concepts in the Tafsīrs of Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabā?ī and al-Ṭāhir b. "Āshūr, Kathrin Klausing

14:Yaşar Nuri Öztürk: A Contemporary Turkish Tafsīr Theorist, Kathrin Eith

15:The Contemporary Translation of Classical Works Of Tafsīr, Andrew Rippin

Author Information

Edited by Andreas Görke, Lecturer in Islamic Studies, University of Edinburgh, and Johanna Pink, Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Freiburg

Andreas Görke is Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He earned his Dr. phil. from the University of Hamburg in 2001 and his Habilitation from the University of Basel in 2010. He has worked as lecturer and researcher at the Universities of Hamburg and Basel, the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Freie Universität Berlin, and the University of Kiel, and served as acting professor for early and classical Islam at the University of Hamburg. His research interests include early Islamic history and historiography, the life of the Prophet Muhammad, Koran and Koranic exegesis, Hadith, Islamic law, the transmission of Arabic manuscripts, Islam in its late antique environment and the impact of modernity on Muslim thought.

Johanna Pink is Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Bonn in 2002 and has since worked as a lecturer, researcher and visiting professor at both the University of Tübingen and the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include Muslim exegesis and translation of the Qur'an, the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, and contemporary developments in Islamic law and thought. She has published books and articles on contemporary Sunni tafsīr, the status of non-Muslim minorities in Egypt, Muslim mass consumption and internet use, and various modern theological and legal debates.

Contributors:

Abdessamad Belhaj is assistant professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Hungary.

Andrea Brigaglia is a lecturer at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town.

Catherine Bronson is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago.

Claude Gilliot is professor emeritus at the Université de Provence, Aix-en Provence.

Kathrin Eith is currently working as a lecturer for Turkish at the University of Halle.

Andreas Görke is a lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Nejmeddine Khalfallah is a lecturer at INALCO and at Sciences-Po Paris.

Kathrin Klausing has completed her PhD at the Institute for Arabic Studies at the Free University of Berlin.

Johanna Pink is professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Freiburg.

Andrew Rippin is professor of Islamic History at the University of Victoria.

Ignacio Sánchez is a PhD candidate at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Rebecca Sauer is a postdoctoral research fellow for the Collaborative Research Centre 'Material Text Cultures' at the University of Heidelberg.

Nicolai Sinai is university lecturer at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, and fellow of Pembroke College.

Roberto Tottoli is professor at the Università degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale'.

Neguin Yavari is assistant professor of Middle East History in the Committee on Historical Studies, The New School University.

Reviews and Awards

"[T]his edited volume is very valuable. ... it contains important contributions of a high standard that pave the way for future research in the field. Moreover, it poses the right questions on the nature of the genre and the analytical tools needed to study it." - Pieter Coppens, Journal of Qur'anic Studies