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Qur'ān.

By:
Mahmoud M. Ayoub, Vincent J. Cornell, Abdullah Saeed, Mustansir Mir, Bruce Fudge
Source:
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World What is This? Provides comprehensive scholarly coverage of the full geographical and historical extent of Islam

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    View Archived Article What is This? Click link to access earlier form of this article as published in the Oxford Enyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World

    Qur'ān.

    This entry focuses on the scripture of the Muslim community. It comprises three articles:

    The first article gives a brief history of the origin, collection, and structure of the text. The second presents the Qur'ān as a unique communication from God and provides a survey of modern exegesis of the text. The third discusses the central role of the Qur'ān in Muslim piety. For further discussion of the teachings of the Qur'ān, see Islam, overview article.

    History of the Text

    The Qur'ān is a unique phenomenon in human religious history. It is held by its adherents to exist beyond the mundane sphere as the eternal and immutable word of God, “a glorious qur'ān [preserved] in a well‐guarded tablet” ( 85.21–22 ). It is also an earthly book whose history is intimately tied to the life and history of an earthly community.

    Although it was shaped by the Muslim community, the Qur'ān in fact created that community and remains the foundation‐stone of its faith and morality. Many of its verses were circumstantially determined by the social and religious conditions and questions of the Prophet's society; yet the Qur'ān is believed to transcend all considerations of time and space.

    Revelation.

    The Qur'ān is for Muslims the literal word of God revealed to the prophet Muḥammad . Like a number of pious Arabs, known as ḥanīfs, who rejected the idolatrous and immoral ways of their people, Muḥammad periodically left his home for solitary prayer and meditation (taḥannuth) in a cave on Mount Ḥirā' in the vicinity of Makkah (Mecca). During one such retreat in his fortieth year an awesome person, later identified as the angel Gabriel , appeared to Muḥammad as he sat one evening wrapped in deep meditation. Taking hold of him, the angel pressed Muḥammad so hard that he thought he was dying. This he repeated three times with the command “Read” or “Recite” (iqra'). Muḥammad asked, “What shall I read?” The angel then recited the first five verses of surah 96 , which are traditionally considered to be the first revelation of the Qur'ān.

    According to other reports, when the Prophet saw Gabriel he was frightened; he ran home and asked his family to cover him up. In that state of fear and trepidation revelation came down, ordering him to “rise and warn” ( 74.1–2 ). After a period of uncertainty lasting somewhere between six months and two years during which revelation was temporarily interrupted, the Prophet was reassured that the revelations he was receiving were from God, and that the spirit he encountered was an angel and not a demon. Thereafter revelation continued without interruption until his death in AH 10/632 CE . The formative history of the Qur'ān was therefore coterminous with the Prophet's life.

    Qur'ān and Prophet.

    Tradition reports that when revelation came to the Prophet, he fell into a trancelike state. During such times he is said to have seen Gabriel either in human guise or in his angelic form. At still other times the Prophet heard sounds like the ringing of a bell; these sounds he apprehended as words that he remembered and communicated to others. The normal mode of revelation, however, was direct communication (waḥy) by the angel Gabriel.

    During the Prophet's life many of his companions, as well as some of his wives, had their own partial collections (maṣāḥif; sg., muṣḥaf) of the Qur'ān, which they used in their prayers and private devotions. Other collections were made by the Prophet's amanuenses, known as the scribes of revelation.

    These early collections differed in important respects, such as the number and order of the surahs and variant readings of certain verses, words, and phrases. With the spread of Islam outside Arabia, private collections and hence variant readings multiplied. Furthermore, as different codices gained popularity in particular regions of the expanding Islamic empire, the need soon arose for an official codex.

    Collection of the Qur'ān.

    The crystallization of the Qur'ān was a long process, and its early stages were shrouded in political, theological, and juristic exigencies. Each of the four rightly guided caliphs has been credited with either initiating or forwarding this important process. Historians and traditionists are, however, unanimously agreed that an official codex was adopted under the aegis of the third caliph, ῾Uthmān (r. 644–656), within twenty years of the Prophet's death.

    The difficult task of eliminating rival codices was gradually but never fully achieved; many peculiarities of the early codices have survived in the official variant readings of the Qur'ān. By the third/ninth century a universally accepted orthography and system of vocalization of the ῾Uthmānic codex was fixed. This helped to reduce a multitude of variant readings to only seven equally valid ones. Among these, the reading of ʿĀṣim (d. 744 ), transmitted by Ḥafṣ (d. 805 ), predominates in most areas of the Muslim world today. The royal Egyptian edition of 1924 , which follows this reading and has itself become a standard text has further contributed to its popularity.

    Structure and Internal History.

    The Qur'ān is a rather small book, consisting of 114 surahs or chapters varying in length from three to 286 verses. The surahs were arranged roughly by length, which means that the earliest and shortest surahs were placed at the end, and the latest and longest ones at the beginning.

    Very early commentators classified Qur'ānic materials into Meccan and Medinan surahs. On the basis of such internal evidence as change in style, idiom, and subject matter of the revelations, modern Western scholarship has divided the Meccan period into early, middle, and late periods.

    In spite of such efforts to construct a broad chronology of the Qur'ān, this goal remains impossible, because the sacred text itself provides no reliable framework for the history of its revelation. Nevertheless, knowledge of its chronology is crucial for an understanding of the early history of the Muslim community.

    The Qur'ān makes numerous references to particular events and situations in the life of the Prophet and his society. On the basis of such allusions an important field of Qur'ānic study known as “occasions” or “causes (asbāb) of revelation” was developed. This subject is closely related to another field, the study of the abrogated and abrogating verses of the Qur'ān. Both fields are, moreover, of great significance for the developments of law and theology. But because law and theology have been inexorably bound to the political and sectarian realities of Muslim history, the study of the chronology of the Qur'ān has likewise been deeply affected by political and sectarian considerations.

    In itself, the Qur'ān has been a closed book since the death of the Prophet; but the Qur'ān has continued to interact with the history of the Muslim world. From the beginning Muslims have dedicated their best minds, voices, and musical talents to the exegesis and recitation of the Qur'ān. While Western scholarship has subjected the Qur'ān to the full rigor of modern historical and literary criticism, contemporary Islamic scholarship has limited itself to the criticism of the Qur'ānic sciences. As for the Qur'ān itself, it remains the criterion by which everything else is judged.

    Bibliography

    • Bell, Richard . Bell's Introduction to the Qur'ān. New ed., revised by W. Montgomery Watt . Edinburgh, 1970 . Basic English study, and still useful, but too speculative and inconclusive.
    • Burton, John . The Collection of the Qur'ān. Cambridge, 1977 . Through a thorough analysis of classical juristic, ḥadīth, and exegetical sources, Burton arrives at the opposite conclusion from that of Wansbrough. The so‐called ῾Uthmānic codex was in fact, Burton asserts, the muṣḥaf used during the Prophet's life. Thus it was not ῾Uthmān, but Muḥammad who first collected the Qur'ān.
    • Goldziher, Ignácz . Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung ( 1920 ). Leiden, 1970 . Classic work on Qur'ānic exegesis, beginning with a very useful discussion of the history of the Qur'ānic text.
    • Jeffery, Arthur , ed. Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'ān. Leiden, 1937 . Important piece of research into the codex fragments preserved in classical works on the subject.
    • Khū'ī, Abū al‐Qāsim al‐ . Al‐Bayān fī Tafsīr al‐Qur 'ān. Beirut, 1975 . Al‐Khū'ī (or al‐Kho'i; d. 1993) was the supreme authority (marja῾) in legal and religious matters for the Twelver Shīʿī community. Long before Burton, he arrived at essentially the same conclusion. His thesis is that “῾Uthmān did not collect a muṣḥaf, but rather united the Muslim community upon an already existing and generally excepted one.” The work also deals with many important issues in Qur'ānic studies.
    • Nöldeke, Theodor . Geschichte des Qorāns ( 1860 ). Revised and enlarged by Friedrich Schwally . 2 vols. Leipzig, 1909 . Revised and enlarged by Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1905–1938. Rev. ed. Hildesheim, 1964. Basic work on the history of the Qur'ān.
    • Sa῾īd, Labīb al‐ . The Recited Koran. Translated by Bernard G. Weiss et al. Princeton, 1975 . Muslim response to Western critical scholarship on the Qur'ān.
    • Wansbrough, John . Quranic Studies. Oxford, 1977 . Using biblical critical methods in the study of the Qur'ān, Wansbrough concludes that the sacred book did not attain its present state until the third century. Similar arguments are presented in his Sectarian Milieu (Oxford, 1978 ).
    • Welch, Alford T. Ḳur'ān. In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 5, pp. 400–432. Leiden, 1960– . Welch remains one of the few committed proponents of Bell's theories. The article provides a useful overview of Western Qur'ānic studies and a number of the author's own conclusions.

    Mahmoud M. Ayoub

    The Qur'ān As Scripture

    The term Qur'ān, most often translated as “reading” or “recital,” has been linked etymologically to Syriac qeryānā (“scripture reading, lection”) and to Hebrew miqra' (“recitation, scripture”). Some Muslim commentators have also proposed that it comes from the Arabic verb qarana, “to put together” or “bind together,” thus giving the approximate translation of “a coherent recital” or “a scripture bound in the form of a book.” As a verbal noun (masdar) of the form fu῾lān, qur'ān carries the connotation of a “continuous reading” or “eternal lection” that is recited and heard over and over. In this sense, it is understood both as a spiritual touchstone and a literary archetype. As a title, al‐Qur'ān refers to the revelation (tanzīl) “sent down” (unzila) by God to the prophet Muḥammad over a period of twenty‐two years ( 610 – 632 C.E. ). In its more universal connotation, it is the self‐expressed umm al‐kitāb or paradigm of divine communication ( 13.39 ). For all Muslims, the Qur'ān is the quintessential scripture of Islam.

    The term “the Noble Qur'ān” (al‐Qur'ān al‐Karīm, 56.77 ) is often used to stress the extraordinary nature of this text. Since its divine source makes the Qur'ān a sacred and therefore unique form of communication, its meaningfulness is dependent on the prior acceptance of a faith claim that posits specific assumptions about its historical and metahistorical contexts. Consequently, the Qur'ān's significance for the pious Muslim is entirely different from that seen by the non‐Muslim or Islamic secularist. Because each and every written word and recited sound of the scripture is revered by believers in Islam as part of a divine lection, an interpretation of the Qur'ān solely according to the canons of literary criticism or philology can only do violence to the revelation in terms of its meaning to its audience. For this reason, many scholars in the West have ceased speculating on the “actual” origins of the Qur'ān or the historicity of its text and have devoted themselves instead to evaluating the Qur'ān's undeniable surplus of meaning in a combination of literary, cultural, and historical contexts.

    As a communication from God, the Qur'ān is the prime theophany of Islam. Because its text consists of divine rather than human speech (kalām Allāh, 9.6 ), its significance for Muslims is similar to that of the logos (divine word) in Christianity. However, unlike the normative Christian view of the Bible as a divinely inspired discourse (but closely akin to Jewish attitudes concerning the holiness of scripture), the words of the Qur'ān are regarded by most Muslims as divine in and of themselves. Although the fully divine nature of Qur'ānic “speech” is difficult for the secular reader to understand, the importance of this concept should not be underestimated. Modern Muslims still demonstrate their reverence for the Qur'ān by approaching it in a state of ritual purity. At times it may also be treated as a prized artifact—as evidenced by the production of hand‐decorated, calligraphic copies (maṣāḥif) and the popularity of Middle‐Period Qur'ān manuscripts in collections of Islamic art. Ṣūfīs have long regarded the Qur'ān as a paradigm for all of God's communication with his creation. In the thirteenth century the great Andalusian mystic Ibn ῾Arabī (d. 1240 ) organized the entirety of Al‐futūḥāt al‐Makkīyah (The Meccan Inspirations), his magnum opus, in conformity with the discourses and “signs” of the divine text.

    Structure

    The text of the Qur'ān is divided into 114 segments or surahs (Ar., sūrah; pl., suwar), each of which contains from three to 286 or 287 āyāt (sg., āyah). Although it has been common for Westerners to translate āyah as “verse,” this is misleading. In the first place, the biblical concept of “chapter and verse” does not fully apply to the Qur'ān. Particularly in the case of the longer segments, the surahs may not always discuss themes whose consistency is easily apparent from title to final āyah. Indeed, the names of the surahs themselves may refer only obliquely to the main point of the discourse, and in several cases they have been changed at different times in Islamic history. This process continues even today, despite the increased standardization brought about by the mass printing of official renditions. Surah 7 , for example, might be called Banū Isrā'īl (Children of Israel) in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, while in Egypt and Iran it is likely to be known as Al‐isrā' (The Night Journey). Each of these names refers to a different theme discussed in the same surah. Furthermore, while it is certainly correct to view the Qur'ān as a collection of divine discourses, a single surah may contain more than one discourse. On other occasions (as in the story of Mūsā/Moses), the same discourse may be continued in two or more noncontiguous surahs.

    The most important reason for not referring to āyah as “verse,” however, comes from the Qur'ān's own use of the term. The words āyah or āyāt are employed nearly four hundred times throughout the text. Most frequently, āyah refers to evidences (āthār) in nature that demonstrate the existence of God. At other times it may refer to a miracle confirming the truth of a prophet's message, a revealed message (tanzīl) in general, or even a fundamental “point” in a particular surah's discourse. Because of its multivalency, āyah can be seen to correspond quite closely to the concept of “sign” in Saussurean linguistics. An important proof of this assertion lies in the fact that “sign” (῾alāmah) is the most commonly accepted synonym for āyah in Ibn Manẓūr's (d. 1311/12 ) Lisān al‐῾Arab and other influential lexicons of the Islamic Middle Period.

    When inscribed in a written Qur'ān or recited on a believer's tongue, āyah is best understood as “a statement in the speech of God.” The totality of these statements, along with a number of non‐Qur'ānic inspirations known as ḥadīth qudsī (holy reports), constitute the divine “speech” (parole) as revealed to the prophet Muḥammad . Yet each statement of the Qur'ān was also revealed as a “remembrance” or “recollection” (dhikr or dhikrā, 38.8 ), whose purpose is to awaken human beings and cause them to look up from the written or recited text, so that they may see the existence of God through his creation. In this case, each āyah of the Qur'ān is also a sign—in the symbolic or semiotic sense—that points to another level of reality that in turn reaffirms the message of revelation. The believer who seeks to develop a sense of the sacred must thus learn two distinct levels of “language” (langue) at the same time—the Arabic text of the Qur'ān itself and the “language” of nature, which is also a manifestation of the speech of God. God created the world as a book; his revelations descended to Earth and were compiled into a book; therefore, the human being must learn to “read” the world as a book. This aspect of spiritual intellection is exemplified in the Qur'ān by the figures of Ibrāhīm/Abraham, who discerned the One God in the multiplicity of heavenly phenomena ( 6.75–79 ), and Sulaymān/Solomon, who was inspired to understand the “discourse of the birds” (manṭiq al‐ṭayr, 27.16 ).

    Theology and Anthropology

    As an expression of theology, the Qur'ān is first and foremost a demonstration (bayān) of the existence of God. In this guise it acts as a criterion of discernment (furqān or mīzān): “And We gave Moses the Book and the furqān so that you might be guided” ( 2.55 ). This discernment—the same as that given to Muḥammad , Abraham , Jesus , and all the other biblical and non‐biblical prophets mentioned in the Qur'ān—leads humankind to perceive a single, absolute truth (the only noncontingent reality) that transcends the world of phenomena. This truth is God, whose essence, being unique and exalted, lies beyond the limits of human imagination: “Say: He is Allāh the Only; Allāh the Perfect beyond compare; He gives not birth, nor is He begotten, and He is, in Himself, not dependent on anything” (112). This purely monotheistic expression of divine simplicity is complemented, however, by a more monistic image of a complex deity who is immanent in the world by virtue of being the source of existence itself: “He is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward; And He is the Knower of every thing” ( 57.3 ). Between these two poles of monotheism and monism stands tawḥīd, the recognition of transcendent oneness that constitutes the theological premise of Islam and the fundamental message of the Qur'ānic discourse.

    Despite the radically monotheistic nature of Islamic theology, the discourse about God in the Qur'ān fluctuates repeatedly between transcendence and immanence, the abstract and the concrete, the logical and the analogical: God is one and not a trinity ( 5.75 ); lord of the east and the west ( 55.17 ); he sends rain and revives the earth ( 29.63 ); his “face” will abide forever ( 55.27 ). Out of these distinctions arises the tradition of the ninety‐nine asmā' Allāh al‐ḥusnā or “excellent names of God” ( 7.180 ), which for later Muslim thinkers expressed the discursive field in which tawḥīd was conceptualized. The central or medial figure who straddles these perspectives (and in Sufism actualizes the excellent names according to his or her ability and destiny) is the human being (insān, masc. pl. nās, fem. pl. nisā'). The Qur'ān's use of this generic term demonstrates that both men and women are rational and ethically responsible creatures who occupy an intermediate position in respect to all the oppositions (e.g., true and false, necessary and contingent, or real and unreal) that characterize the Qur'ānic discourse. As such, the most meaningful duty in the life of every person is to submit the ego and intellect to the criterion (furqān) of manifest truth as given in the divine revelation. This act of choice, in turn, is the furqān that separates islām (surrender and submission to the one God) from kufr (“covering up” or denying the reality and moral implications of islām).

    Human accountability is epitomized in the Qur'ān by a generic covenant ( 33.72 ) in which preexistent humanity, despite its creaturely limitations, assumes responsibility for the heavens and the earth. This moral and ecological commitment constitutes another furqān by which human actions are assessed. Also called “God's covenant” (῾ahd Allāh, 2.27 ), this pact was created to distinguish male and female hypocrites (munāfiqūn) and those lost in contingent reality (mushrikūn) from the believers (mu'minūn) who maintain their trust in the absolute ( 33.73 ). The human being who trusts in God and is true to God's trust by not breaking this covenant in thought, word, or deed actualizes God's vicegerency (khilāfah, 2.30–33 ), through which one is able to exercise choice and maintain covenantal responsibility. The society made up of such believing individuals thus constitutes a normative or “axial community” (ummatan wasatan), which acts collectively as a witness to the truth ( 2.143 ). This society appears in history as a “community in a state of surrender to God” (ummah muslimah, 2.128 ) and is exemplified in its penultimate form by the paradigmatic ummah created by the prophet Muḥammad and his companions in Medina ( 622 – 632 C.E. ).

    Qur'ān and Bible

    References in the Qur'ān to the stories of biblical and extrabiblical prophets and their communities must be viewed from the perspective of the ummah muslimah in order to become intelligible to the Western reader. The historical discourses of the Qur'ān are linked together thematically rather than chronologically, and thus the revelatory concept of the book or divine communication (kitāb) employed in this text has more in common with the genre of wisdom traditions (cf., al‐Kitāb al‐Ḥakīm [X, 1]) than with that of European historiography or Aristotle's Poetics. For this reason students of Islam whose view of scripture is based on Judeo‐Christian models are likely to be confused or even put off by what at first seems to be an incoherent scattering of biblical accounts and apocrypha. If, however, the text of the Qur'ān is read according to its own instructions to Christians and Jews—as a reminder (dhikr) and reaffirmation (muṣaddiq) of universal truths and the essential points of biblical discourse ( 5.44–48 )—its lack of historical detail becomes less of a problem, and the logic of the Qur'ān's self‐described complementarity to previous revelations ( 41.43 ) is easier to understand. As with every other sign, the purpose of a biblical reminder is to stimulate intellectual awareness, not to provide an exhaustive discussion of a particular person or topic. In the Qur'ān these reminders revolve around the quintessential unity of the Abrahamic tradition and include exemplary and cautionary narratives detailing humanity's acceptance or rejection of the divine message.

    Despite the Qur'ān's apparent advocacy of an inter‐textual approach to scriptural analysis ( 5.47–51 ), a later preoccupation with abrogation (naskh) made the comparative study of revelation more difficult at precisely the time (ninth century C.E.) when the vocalization of the consonantal text of the Qur'ān fixed its discourse so that a true hermeneutic could become possible. The jurist al‐Shāfi῾ī's (d. 820 ) insistence that the Qur'ān was the primary source (aṣl) for Islamic law meant that its prescriptive (muḥkam) āyāt abrogated similar statutes in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Gospels. Subsequent scholars expanded on al‐Shāfi῾ī's comments and claimed that the words of the Qur'ān constituted a blanket abrogation of the texts of all previous holy books. This opinion was reinforced by the doctrine of the “inimitability of the Qur'ān (i῾jāz al‐Qur'ān). Originating as part of a debate over the Qur'ān's challenge to unbelievers to produce a work of comparable eloquence and substance ( 2.23 ), by the time of the theologian al‐Bāqillānī (d. 1013 ) this concept had evolved into the idea that the Qur'ān was completely unlike anything that had been revealed before. As a result, contemporary Muslim arguments against the doctrines of other “peoples of the book” (ahl al‐kitāb) still tend to recycle earlier polemics against Christianity and Judaism that are found in the Qur'ān itself or in the works of Middle‐Period theologians. Only rarely does a Muslim exegete overcome the influence of tradition and undertake a serious study of modern Judaism or post‐Reformation Christianity. This is even more the case in regard to polytheistic or nontheistic scriptural traditions, such as those of China and India.

    Translations

    A hallmark of twentieth‐century exegesis (tafsīr) is the translation of the Qur'ān into local and regional vernaculars. As early as the eighth century the jurist Abū Ḥanīfah (d. 767 ) claimed that it was permissible for non‐Arabic speakers to recite al‐Fātiḥah, the opening surah of the Qur'ān, in Persian. Although other jurists disputed this view as contradicting the Qur'ān's own assertion of its Arabic linguistic identity (cf. 12.2, 16.23 ), a nativist (shu῾ūbī) cultural revival on the Iranian plateau led to Persian translations of the complete text by the eleventh century. These works, however, did not have ritual value. The consensus of ῾ulamā' has long held that a direct translation of divine speech is impossible. Vernacular editions of the Qur'ān are thus classified as commentaries or interpretations (tafsīr or tafhīm) to distinguish them from the Arabic original. This monadist opinion was authoritatively reaffirmed in the present century by the Syrian Pan‐Islamist Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1935 ), who strongly rebutted Kemalist attempts to make Turkish a language of worship in the 1920s.

    Important contemporary translations of the Qur'ān include those of the Indian modernist ῾Abdullāh Yūsuf ῾Alī (in English), the Pakistani reformer and politician Sayyid Abū al‐A῾lā Mawdūdī (in Urdu), and the Indonesian scholar, poet, and independence activist Hamka (in Bahasa Indonesia). In each of these cases the purpose of translation was twofold: to promote the related causes of Islamic preaching (da῾wah) and reform by making the text of the Qur'ān accessible to non‐Arabic‐speaking audiences, and to counteract translations of the Qur'ān in vernacular or European languages by non‐Muslim missionaries and orientalist scholars working for colonial regimes. Of the translators mentioned above, Yūsuf ῾Alī is the least inclined to believe that rendering the words of God into another language implies a decisive departure from the original text. Although he asserts that his desire is to provide an “English interpretation” (tafsīr) of the Qur'ān, the final product (variously entitled The Glorious Qur'an, The Holy Qur'an, or The Holy Qur‐an, 1934 ) is more commonly thought of by Muslims as an annotated translation rather than an exegetical work per se. This is primarily because the commentaries are introduced as footnotes or bracketed additions to the translated text. In fact, Yūsuf ῾Alī's avowed goal of making “English itself an Islamic language” has very nearly been realized. His work is at present the most widely available Qur'ān translation in English and forms the basis of the semiofficial Muṣḥaf al‐Madīnah al‐Nabawīyah printed in Saudi Arabia in 1990 .

    Mawdūdī's Tafhīm al‐Qur'ān ( 1942 – 1979 ), although superficially similar to Yūsuf ῾Alī's work, is indisputably an example of tafsīr. In both his rendering of the original Arabic into Urdu and his extended discussions of each surah, the author's explicit intent is to amplify and clarify a unitary “Islamic message” for da῾wah purposes. Part of this clarification entails transforming the structure of the Qur'ān into paragraphs rather than leaving its text (either in Arabic or Urdu) in the traditional single‐āyah format. This innovation is coupled with an analysis of the divine revelation according to the doctrines of the Jamā῾at‐i Islāmī, which Mawdūdī founded in 1941 . According to this party's point of view, the Qur'ān is both a revolutionary manifesto and a manual for missionaries; its message calls for the reconstruction of human society into an ideologically motivated community of virtue and social activism. As such, its text provides a blueprint for transcending sectarian and legalistic divisions and uniting humanity into a single brotherhood. As an implicitly political work, Tafhīm al‐Qur'ān has much in common with Fī Ẓilāl al‐Qur'ān, an equally influential tafsīr in Arabic by the Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Quṭb (d. 1966 ). See Mawdūdī, Sayyid Abu al‐Ala .

    Vernacular translations of the Qur'ān n in Southeast Asia first appeared in the 1920s but did not become fully accepted until the 1960s. In most texts the vernacular rendition (in Bahasa Melayu, Indonesian, Sundanese, or Javanese) follows or is parallel to the Arabic original of each āyah and is referred to as an “interpretation” (Malay, terjemah, tafsīr). Prefatory discussions are commonly added, and exegetical material is usually found in the form of extended footnotes, as in Yūsuf ῾Alī's and Mawdūdī's translations. Tafsīr al‐Azhar, the translation and exegesis by the West Sumatran scholar and Indonesian independence activist Hamka ( Hadji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah ,d. 1981 ) is notable because of its nationalistic tone. Written in Bahasa Indonesia, this important work is a semi‐official tafsīr of the Indonesian Muhammadiyah organization and has been widely disseminated throughout the Malay‐speaking world. Hamka is distinctive among Southeast Asian commentators for his use of interlineal exegesis (a technique common in the Arabic tradition) and his reliance upon recent Indonesian history to illustrate specific points in the Qur'ānic discourse. See Hamka .

    Modern Arabic Exegesis

    Modern exegesis of the Qur'ān begins with the writings of Muḥammad ῾Abduh (d. 1905 ), an Egyptian essayist, jurisconsult, founder of the Salafīyah movement, and rector of al‐Azhar University in Cairo. ῾Abduh's exegetical corpus consists of four works: Tafsīr al‐fātiḥah ( 1901 ), Tafsīr sūrat al‐῾aṣr ( 1903 ), Tafsīr Juz' ῾amma ( 1922 – 1923 ), and the twelve‐volume Tafsīr al‐Qur'ān al‐Ḥakīm (sometimes called Tafsīr al‐manār, 1927 – 1935 ), which was completed after his death by Rashīd Riḍā . As a neotraditionalist scholar who felt an affinity for Mu῾tazilī rationalism, ῾Abduh was influential in reviving the earlier genre of reason‐based exegesis (tafsīr bi'l‐ra'y), which except for the writings of certain Ṣūfīs had lain dormant for centuries. Also an avowed Spenserian social evolutionist, he saw the regulatory āyāt of the Qur'ān as corresponding to natural law, and he characterized the process of evolution as part of “God's sunnah” (sunnat Allāh, 48.23 ) or unchangeable pattern of conduct. He generally rejected the possibility of miracles as contradicting this principle but excepted the Qur'ān, whose miraculous uniqueness serves to awaken human reason to the truth of Muḥammad's prophecy. Claiming to follow the noted theologian al‐Ghazālī (d. 1111 ), ῾Abduh asserted that even the ambiguous (mutashābihāt) āyāt should be open to analysis using the tools of modern thought. Once Islam was understood through the light of modern knowledge, the rectification of religious practice demanded that Muslims also take on the reformation of society as a whole. As a justification for this position ῾Abduh cited the first part of āyah 13.11 : “God will never change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” See ῾Abduh, Muhammad .

    A direct successor to the ῾Abduh‐Riḍā tafsīr is Sayyid Quṭb's (d. 1966 ) Fī Ẓilāl al‐Qur'ān (In the Shade of the Qur'ān). Written for the most part between 1954 and 1964 during the author's longest period of imprisonment, this posthumously published work adopts many of the positions—both explicit and implicit—of ῾Abduh's earlier tafsīr. This reflects the fact that Quṭb's mentor, the Egyptian reformist and political activist Ḥasan al‐Bannā' (d. 1949 ), was a student of ῾Abduh's disciple Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā . Like its predecessor, Fī Ẓilāl al‐Qur'ān is also an example of tafsīr bi al‐ra'y. Despite numerous appeals to the precedent of the Prophet and his companions, Sayyid Quṭb rivaled ῾Abduh in his faith in modern science as a universal criterion for knowledge, going so far as to quote British scientific journals in his exegesis. Both authors also distinguished themselves as advocates of social and intellectual reform and were equally fond of citing āyah 13.11 as a justification for sociopolitical activism.

    Sayyid Quṭb differed from his predecessor, however, over the degree to which change dictates compromise with alien sociocultural systems. Although ῾Abduh maintained a traditional aura of legitimacy as an Islamic scholar and jurisconsult, he was also a political accommodationist who regarded British administration and scientific positivism as evolutionary advances over a decayed and ignorant Muslim society. Sayyid Quṭb by contrast, as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was a committed anticolonialist and anti‐imperialist who sought to revive a Qur'ān‐based “Islamic system” (al‐niẓām al‐Islāmī) that remained true to the cultural and social values established by God and Muslim consensus. While fully modern in his belief in the unitary message of the Qur'ān and skeptical of the accuracy of many prophetic traditions (ḥadīth), Sayyid Quṭb nonetheless rejected the examples of both the Uniteds States and the Soviet Union as societies where man is either made a commodity or reduced to little more than a machine. Western imperialism, he asserted, had created a “new ignorance” (jāhilīyah) in the Muslim world, where an original, faith‐based consciousness of God (taqwā) was replaced by a “jāhilī consciousness” characterized by immorality, political corruption, and a servile reliance on Western paradigms. As the title to his tafsīr, In the Shade of the Qur'ān, indicates, the Qur'ān serves Muslims not only as a source of guidance but also as a refuge from destructive influences. See Quṭb, Sayyid .

    Apart from translation, the most important hallmark of modern exegesis of the Qur'ān has been the tendency to view each surah as a unified discourse. In itself this approach is not new. As early as the eleventh century it was followed by the influential Ṣūfī al‐Qushayrī (d. 1073 ) in his exegesis Laṭā'if al‐ishārāt (The Subtleties of Symbolism). In the following century the Andalusian legist Abū Bakr ibn al‐῾Arabī (d. 1148 ) bemoaned the lack of interest in intratextual hermeneutics (῾ilm al‐munāsabāt), and the subject was brought up again in the fourteenth‐century tafsīr of Badr al‐Dīn al‐Zarakhshī (d. 1391 ). Until the twentieth century, however, such opinions were rare, and the usual approach was to view each surah as an atomistic collection of discontinuous narratives. In recent times Western attacks on the coherence of the Qur'ān have led to an apologetic defense of the text that vindicates its present structure by demonstrating the existence of thematic unities.

    Although this approach is now followed by most modern commentators, one of the clearest examples of ῾ilm al‐munāsabāt can be found in Al‐mīzān fī tafsīr al‐Qur'ān (The Balance of Judgment in the Exegesis of the Qur'ān, 1973 – 1974 ), an influential Shīʿī tafsīr in Arabic by the noted Iranian philosopher and theologian Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusayn al‐Ṭabāṭabā'ī (d. 1981 ). He begins his exegesis of each surah by identifying its central theme, which he calls its “purpose” or “intent” (gharad). This theme is discovered by examining the surah's opening, its end, and the general flow of discourse. The actual commentary is then divided into subtexts, which correspond to discursive changes in the divine speech.

    It is important to note, however, that Ṭabāṭabā'ī does not impose an artificial unity on the Qur'ān, nor does he conceive of his exegesis as an example of tafsīr bi al‐ra'y. As a scholastic theologian and strict follower of the uṣūlī (source‐oriented) jurisprudential tradition of Twelver or Iṃāmī Shiism, he prefers to let the Qur'ān “explain itself by itself” (tafsīr al‐Qur'ān bi'l‐ Qur'ān) following a statement of Imam ῾Alī: “One part of the Qur'ān explains another, and one part witnesses to the other.” Rejecting the concept of reason‐based exegesis as a matter of principle, Ṭabāṭabā'ī first tries to explain ambiguous āyāt by syllogistically referring to others whose meaning is apparent. Next he turns to the extensive corpus of exegetical traditions left behind by the Shīʿī imams. When using a purely scholastic approach, as in his discussions of grammatical points, semantics, or human nature, Ṭabāṭabā'ī takes great pains to ensure that his conclusions are in overall agreement with the consensus of previous Imāmī scholarship. See Ṭabāṭabā'ī, Muhammad Husayn .

    Qur'ān and Modernism

    In recent years the Qur'ān has become a touchstone for controversy as well as piety. Nowhere has this been more the case than in modernist polemics, many of whose practitioners view the Qur'ān through the lens of ideological precommitment. Particularly prominent is the debate over the empowerment of Muslim women, who have become both combatants and prize in the struggle between Western critics of Islam and their Muslim opponents. A recent discussion of the Qur'ān from a womanist point of view is Amina Wadud's Qur'ān and Woman ( 1992 ). First published in Malaysia, it is presently used as a manifesto by the “Sisters in Islam” movement in that country. In her approach to the Qur'ān the American Wadud attempts to lay the groundwork for nontraditional tafsīr from a scripturally legitimate perspective. Borrowing heavily from the semantic analyses of the Japanese Qur'ānic scholar Toshihiko Izutsu and the modernist exegesis of the Pakistani Islamicist Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988 ), she postulates a distinction between the historically and culturally contextualized “prior text” of the Qur'ān and a wider metatext that conveys a more tolerant and universalistic worldview. Her conclusion is that while the Qur'ān indeed acknowledges functional gender distinctions based on biology, it does not propose essential or culturally universal roles for males and females. In fact, the assignment of gender distinctions based on early Arabian precedent would eliminate the transcendental nature of the Qur'ān by reducing it to a culturally specific set of discourses. Wadud argues her point by demonstrating the Qur'ān's stress on the “primal equality” of men and women, examining the issue of equity in the afterlife, and semantically analyzing Qur'ān‐based legal terminology relating to women and the family.

    Another use of the concept of “prior text,” although with very different results, can be found in Al‐risālah al‐thāniyah min al‐Islām (The Second Message of Islam) by the radical Sudanese modernist Maḥmūd Muḥammad Ṭāḥā (d. 1985 ). Essential to Ṭāḥā's doctrine is a distinction between two categories of the prophet Muḥammad's followers—the muslim (one who submits himself fully to God) and the mu'min (one who acknowledges the truth of the Qur'ān and the Prophet's message). During Muḥammad's lifetime the Prophet himself was the only true muslim, since he alone could submit himself to God completely. For this reason the community that the Prophet created in Medina was composed only of mu'minūn—those who followed the historically and culturally contextualized example of Muḥammad . This early stage of faith (īmān) is exemplified by the Medinan surahs of the Qur'ān and constitutes the “first message of Islam.” As a formal religious tradition, it is characterized by the sharī῾ah. Because it reflected its era and culture, however, the resulting “nation of believers” was unsuited to modern social and intellectual conditions.

    The coming age of islām, by contrast, will be characterized by humankind's readiness to comprehend fully the universal message of the Qur'ān, which appears in the Meccan revelations. Not limited by an outdated “prior text” like the Medinan surahs, which modern conditions have abrogated, the Islam of the Meccan period is open‐ended and subject to further elaboration. Consequently, the “nation of Muslims” born under the influence of this era will be one of tolerance, gender equality, social democracy, and a science‐oriented approach to knowledge. Not content to be bound by the sunnah, Ṭāḥā, the “teacher” (ustādh) of this “second message of Islam,” affirms the continuity of divine guidance by proclaiming himself a post‐Muḥammadan “messenger” (rasūl): “one to whom God granted understanding from the Qur'ān and is authorized to speak” (p. 42).

    Surprisingly, given the radical and even heretical nature of Ṭāḥā's doctrine, it still reflects exegetical issues that have occupied practitioners of tafsīr since the very beginnings of the genre. Although the universality of the prophetic sunnah is seldom debated, the question of its applicability to contemporary conditions has always been important. The historical study of Qur'ān exegesis continually reveals how much the discipline of tafsīr depends on prior methodologies. Muḥammad ῾Abduh's and Sayyid Quṭb's reliance on tafsīr bi al‐ra'y, for example, reprises the approach utilized by the influential Middle‐Period commentator al‐Ṭabarī (d. 923). Even Amina Wadud's undeniably modern use of semantic and “prior text” analyses echoes more mystically minded commentators such as Ibn ῾Arabī and al‐Qushayrī. Undoubtedly certain methodologies, such as translation and intratextual hermeneutics, have become more prominent in recent times; this is only natural given the increasingly non‐Middle‐Eastern demographic profile of the Muslim world and the resulting demand for a crosscultural discourse. Yet the very fact that many new commentaries recall previous approaches highlights the authority of tradition in Islam and the continued self‐referentiality of Muslim exegesis. After all that has been accomplished, one threshold of Qur'ānically legitimate exegesis remains to be crossed—a systematically comparative approach to scriptural analysis.

    Apart from the approaches to the Qur'ān referred to above, the late twentieth century has seen the flourishing of a variety of new ideas in the area of Qur'ānic interpretation. One of the broad trends associated with such ideas is what we may refer to as ‘contextualist’ (as opposed to ‘textualist’). The ‘textualist’ trend remains the most widely adopted approach by the interpreters of the Qur'ān to this day. Textualists rely on a referential theory of meaning to determine the meaning of the Qur'ān, drawing mainly on linguistic rather than social or historical analysis. Scholars who follow this trend often believe that the language of the Qur'ān has concrete, unchanging references, and therefore the meaning and relevance that a Qur'ānic text had upon its revelation still hold for the contemporary context.

    The contextualist trend, broadly speaking, adopts the view that the textual study of the Qur'ān must be accompanied by knowledge of the social, cultural and political conditions of the time of revelation. Contextualists engage not only in linguistic analysis, but also adopt approaches from alternative fields such as hermeneutics and literary theory. In general, the scholarship of contextualists is often associated with a form of Islamic reformism. For many contextualists, meaning is dependent upon the socio‐historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts of the text. Contextualists further argue that subjective factors will always intervene in our understandings, that is, the interpreter cannot approach the text without certain experiences, values, beliefs, and presuppositions influencing their understanding (Esack, pp. 73–77). This approach appears to be more relevant in relation to the interpretation of the ethical‐legal texts of the Qur'ān. In the following we will briefly look at four scholars who could be considered part of such a trend (although they themselves might not use the label ‘contextualist’ to refer to their work): Fazlur Rahman , Mohammad Arkoun , Mohamad Shahrour , and Khaled Abou El Fadl .

    Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988 ), a Pakistani‐American scholar, spent most of his adult life studying and teaching in the UK, Canada, Pakistan, and the USA. Rahman firmly believed that one of the primary purposes of the Qur'ān was to create a society based on justice. He saw the prophet Muhammad as a social reformist who sought to empower the poor, the weak, and vulnerable. He viewed the Qur'ān as a source from which ethical principles could be derived rather than a book of laws. For instance, Rahman argued that the practice of family law in Islamic history had not accorded females the equal rights to which they appear to be entitled based on the Prophet's example and teachings of the Qur'ān.

    Rahman's primary contribution to the debate on the Qur'ān in the twentieth century was his position that in order to understand the Qur'ān, Muslims must move away from reductionist and formulaic approaches to the Qur'ān, which do not recognize its social, historical, and linguistic context. His emphasis on the context of revelation has had a far reaching influence on contemporary Muslim debates on key issues such as human rights, women's rights, and social justice. Rahman argued that without being aware of the social and political conditions of the society in which the Qur'ān was revealed, one could not understand fully its message. Thus the emphasis on the ‘context.’

    Mohammad Arkoun (b. 1928 ) is culturally Berber, French, and Arabic and is a pioneering scholar of contemporary Islamic thought and Qur'ānic studies in particular. Arkoun is not generally respected by traditionalist Muslim scholars, due to his rather ‘secularist’ approach to analysis of the Qur'ān and the apparent influence of intellectuals such as Derrida, Baudrillard, and Foucault on his work (Günther, p. 137). A key element of Arkoun's thinking is his questioning of Islamic orthodoxy, and his view that orthodoxy is equivalent to an ideology and is thus subject to a historical process. Orthodoxy involves a ‘learned culture’, which is steeped in writing and which is expressed through the state. This ‘orthodoxy’ is opposed by a ‘heterodoxy’, which facilitates a popular (and populist) culture, which makes use of (the freer, less stable) ‘orality’ and is present within (or creates) a segmented society (Günther, p. 141)

    Mohamad Shahrour (b. 1938 ), a Syrian civil engineer and self‐taught scholar of Islam, has written extensively on Islam and the Qur'ān. He argues that contemporary Muslims need to reconsider and question the meaning and relevance of Islam's foundation texts. Essential to Shahrour's thought is his differentiation between the divine and the human understanding of the divine reality. He argues that, owing to developments in knowledge, contemporary scholars are much better placed than those in the past to understand the ‘divine will’. As such, Shahrour seeks to create a new framework and methodology for understanding the Qur'ān, and to this end has created his own categories for approaching the Qur'ān (Christmann, pp. 267–269). He questions the established patterns of reading the Qur'ān. The method by which Shahrour proposes to do this is called ‘defamiliarization’, which involves ‘the explicit wish to undermine the well‐established canon of interpretations and to suggest alternative ways of reading a text’. Shahrour wants his readers to understand the Qur'ān ‘as if the Prophet has just died and informed us of this book’, thus approaching the Qur'ān as if reading it for the first time. (Christmann, pp. 263–264). For him, the Qur'ān must be approached in a manner relevant to contemporary concerns and needs of Muslims today.

    Khaled Abou El Fadl (b. 1958 ) is a leading scholar of Islamic law and a traditionally trained Muslim jurist. His major work, Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women, seeks to address the role of the authoritative reader of religious texts, challenging the way in which self‐proclaimed ‘scholars’ of the Qur'ān, particularly in modern times, assume the role of God. He argues that in many cases, such ‘scholars’ displace God's authority, which he describes as ‘an act of despotism’. (Abou El Fadl, p.265). Abou El Fadl highlights the importance of focusing on the interaction between the author of the Qur'ān (God) and the reader, and the authoritative reader's responsibility, by virtue of this special position as interpreter of the text, to act as a faithful ‘agent’ for the ‘principal’ (God), and refrain from imposing their own subjective opinions unless they are clearly stated. The framing of a debate in this manner—which highlights the subjectivity of the reader's position—is clearly an attack on those who ‘speak in God's name’ by claiming the supposed authenticity and infallibility of ‘literalist’ or textualist approaches. He also promotes the idea that there are many possible interpretations of the Qur'ān, and opposes the views of conservative scholars who claim a monopoly on the interpretation of the Qur'ān. Abou El Fadl suggests that Muslim scholars and interpreters of the Qur'ān should use an approach that is rooted in the traditions of Islam and the Muslim experience. His recommendation is that Muslim scholars should start with the Muslim experience and consider how such discourses might be utilized in its service.

    These new ideas have generated heated debates among Mulsims about the meaning and relevance of the Qur'ān and how that can be ascertained. With influences from a wide range of areas from semiotics to hermeneutics on modern scholarship of the Qur'ān, particularly among Muslims, we are more likely to see an added intensity in these debates.

    See also Tafsīr

    Bibliography

    • Abou El Fadl, Khaled . Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women. Oxford: Oneworld, 2001 . The author looks at the role of the authoritative reader of the Qur'ān, challenging the way in which self‐proclaimed ‘scholars’ of the Qur'ān assume the ‘role of God’.
    • Ayoub, Mahmoud M. The Qur'an and its Interpreters, vol. 1. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984 . Synopsis of Middle Period exegeses of the Qur'ān through surah 3 (ʿĀl ῾Imrān). The introduction covers the history of tafsīr. A second volume was published in 1992.
    • Chodkiewicz, Michel . An Ocean without Shore: Ibn ῾Arabi, the Book, and the Law. Translated by David Streight. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993 . Superb discussion of the Ṣūfī approach to the Qur'ān in Ibn al‐῾Arabī's Al‐Futūḥāt al‐Makkīyah .
    • Christmann, Andreas . ‘The form is permanent, but the content moves’: the Qur'anic text and its interpretation(s) in Mohamad Shahrour's al‐Kitāb wal‐Qur'an. In Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an, edited by Suha Taji‐Farouki , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 , pp. 263–286. A good introduction to Shahrour's ideas about the Qur'an.
    • Cragg, Kenneth . The Pen and the Faith: Eight Modern Muslim Writers and the Qur'ān. London: Allen & Unwin, 1985 . Introduction to the importance of the Qur'ān in modern Islamic thought, for the nonspecialist.
    • Esack, Farid , Qur'an, Liberalism and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against Oppression, Oxford: Oneworld, 1997 . Esack provides an alternative view of the Qur'ān in relation to modern concepts of liberalism and pluralism.
    • Gäthe, Helmut . The Qur'ān and Its Exegesis: Selected Texts with Classical and Modern Muslim Interpretations. Translated and edited by Alford T. Welch . Berkeley, 1976 . Thematic exposition of classical and modern tafsīr, more useful for its examples than for a history of the genre.
    • Greifenhagen, F. V. Traduttore Traditore: An Analysis of the History of English Translations of the Qur'ān. Islam and Christian‐Muslim Relations 3.2 ( December 1992 ): 274–291. Excellent overview of polemical and nonpolemical translations in English, with a very useful bibliography.
    • Gunthur, Ursula , Mohammad Arkoun: towards a radical rethinking of Islamic thought. In Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'ān, edited by Suha Taji‐Farouki . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 , pp. 125–167. A good introduction to Arkoun's ideas about the Qur'ān.
    • Hawting, G. R. , and Abdul‐Kader A. Shareef , eds. Approaches to the Qur'ān. London and New York: Routledge, 1993 . Useful overview of traditional and modern approaches to exegesis.
    • Izutsu, Toshihiko . God and Man in the Koran: Semantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung. Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1964 . One of the classics of Qur'ānic studies, and the best semantic analysis of this text written in the modern period.
    • Jeffery, Arthur . The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'ān. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007 . Classic philological study of Qur'ānic terminology as it relates to other religions and cultural systems originally published in 1938. Especially useful for the advanced student of Arabic.
    • Jeffery, Arthur , ed. Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'ān: The Old Codices. New York: AMS Press, 1975 . The only in‐depth study of variations in the Qur'ānic text in early Islamic history. Originally published in 1937; requires knowledge of Arabic.
    • Mawdūdī, Sayyid Abū al‐A῾lā . Towards Understanding the Qur'ān. Translated by Zafar Ishaq Ansari. Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1988 . Excellent English translation of Tafhīm al‐Qur'ān, by the director of the Islamic Research Institute in Pakistan.
    • McAuliffe, Jane Dammen . Qur'ānic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991 . Interesting study of the portrayal of Christians and Christianity in the Qur'ān.
    • Quṭb, Sayyid . In the Shade of the Qur'ān. Vol. 30. Translated by M. Adil Salahi and Ashur A. Shamis. London: MWH, 1979 . Competent translation of the last part of Fī Ẓilāl al‐Qur'ān .
    • Rahman, Fazlur . Major Themes of the Qur'ān. Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980 . One of the better modernist approaches to the Qur'ān, best read as an apologetic response to polemical scholarship.
    • Saeed, Abdullah . Interpreting the Qur'an: Towards a Contemporary Approach, Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2006 It provides some ideas for interpreting the Qur'ān's ethical‐legal texts within a contextualist framework
    • Ṭabāṭabā'ī, Muḥammad Ḥusayn . The Qur'ān in Islam: Its Impact and Influence on the the Life of Muslims. London: Zahra, 1987 . Discussion of Ṭabāṭabā'ī's tafsīr methodology and a useful introduction to Imāmī Shīʿī exegesis. His Tafsīr al‐Mīzān is presently being translated into English.
    • Ṭāḥā, Maḥmūd Muḥammad . The Second Message of Islam. Translated and edited by ῾Abd Allāhi Aḥmad An‐Na῾īm . Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1987 . Taha's exegesis is considered to be radical and heretical by many.
    • Wadud, Amina . Qur'an and Woman. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 . The most effective Muslim response to the feminist critique of Islam yet written.
    • Welch, Alford T. , and J. D. Pearson . ḳur'ān. In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 5, pp. 400–432. Leiden: Brill, 1960 . Useful introduction to the history of the Qur'ān for the nonspecialist, although the philological and Orientalist approach of its author is outdated.

    Vincent J. Cornell

    Updated by Abdullah Saeed

    The Qur'ān in Muslim Thought and Practice

    Because Muslims view the Qur'ān as the very word of God, it naturally occupies the central place in their religious life. It is the one means for discovering the will of God and for measuring the success of a life lived in accordance with it. The Qur'ān has shaped the individual and collective lives of Muslims in many ways.

    The Qur'ān was revealed to Muhammad in large and small portions over some twenty‐two years ( 610 – 632 ). Furthermore, the revelations it contains are related to the situations in which they were revealed and thus become a record of the society of Muhammad's time and constitute the most important source for tracing the historical development of Islam from its origins in Mecca to its maturity in Medina.

    These two roles are important for understanding not only the times of the Prophet, but also much of the later religious history of Muslims. Early Islamic history—even allowing for sectarian and other differences in periodizing and interpreting it—has paradigmatic value for Muslims, and the Qur'ān is universally admitted to be central to that history. It is not surprising that all later movements, whether of radical change or of moderate reform, whether originating at the center or at the periphery of the Islamic world, have sought to ground themselves in the Qur'ān or at least to seek support from it. A typical instance is the Khārijī movement during the caliphate of ῾Alī. Displeased with ῾Alī's decision to accept arbitration (taḥkīm) as an alternative to a military solution of the dispute with Mu῾āwiyah I , the Khārijites appealed to the Qur'ān, declaring its verdict alone acceptableand that of human arbitrators invalid. For their part, the troops of Mu῾āwiyah had, in order to avert imminent defeat, already impaled copies of the Qur'ān on their spears and waved them on the battlefield, practically forcing ῾Alī's camp to accept arbitration.

    The Qur'ān and Literacy.

    Arabian culture was oral; its transformation from preliterate to literate was due mainly to the Qur'ān. The notions of “writing,” “reading,” “pen,” and “book” are found in some of the early revelations. For instance, according to a generally accepted view, the very first revelation consisted of the first five verses of what is now surah 96 96: “Read in the name of your Lord Who created: He created man from a clinging matter. Read, and your Lord is Most Gracious, the One who taught by means of the pen: He taught man what he did not know.”

    According to some scholars, the second to be revealed was surah 68 , al‐Qalam (the Pen), which takes its name from the opening verse. The Qur'ān as a whole is called a “book” in numerous verses. The Qur'ān repeatedly insists on writing down the details of a loan transaction ( 2:282–283 ) and enjoins that the manumission contract be made in writing ( 24:33 ). Numerous scribes were employed by Muhammad to preserve the scriptural text, and reading and writing were encouraged in general. The prisoners taken by the Muslims in the Battle of Badr ( 624 ) between the Muslims of Medina and the Quraysh tribe of Mecca were given the opportunity to win their freedom by teaching a certain number of Muslims how to read and write. A fundamental transformation was thus brought about in the consciousness of the Arabs: a nonliterate culture rapidly became a literate one.

    An important element of the new consciousness was the notion of book as law, for law now came to be identified with something more than custom and tradition passed down orally from earlier times; it came to mean something laid down in writing. Surah 98:3 represents a coalescence of the notions of book and law; the word kutub (writings) in that surah means “laws, regulations.”

    The Qur'ān as the Foundation of Scholarship.

    The idea of the Qur'ān as a book of law, or indeed as a code of life, was to have further important consequences. It gave rise directly or indirectly to the major disciplines of Islamic learning and led to the proliferation of literature in each. Ḥadīth (prophetic tradition), or rather the sunnah (path) of Muhammad embodied in ḥadīth, is regarded as the authoritative explication of the Qur'ān. The sciences of the Arabic language, from lexicography to grammar to rhetoric, were developed in order to reach an accurate understanding of the Qur'ānic text. The need to understand the legislative content of the Qur'ān gave rise to Islamic law and legal theory. The fundamental theological issues in Islam understandably revolve around certain verses of the Qur'ān. Historiography originated with the aim of elaborating the Qur'ānic view of religious history, according to which Adam was the first bearer of the divine message and Muḥammad the last.

    Many Muslim scholars believe that the growth in Islam of religious sciences and of learning in general was inspired by the Qur'ān. They point to the Qur'ān's repeated urgings to study the universe, which is regarded as furnishing āyāt (signs) that point to the existence of a merciful and just creator of the universe. A connection is thus established between science and religion: study of nature becomes a sacred pursuit; acquisition and dissemination of knowledge of all kinds takes on a religious significance; and a spirit of empirical inquiry and investigation is engendered that expresses itself in various areas of scholarly activity. Surah 2:164 may be taken as typical in this regard:

    "Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, the alternation of night and day, and what God has sent down from the sky in the form of water—reviving by means of it the land after it has become barren, and spreading in it animals of all kinds—and the causing of the winds to blow in different ways, and the clouds that are held under control between the heavens and the earth, there are signs for those who would exercise reason."

    The Qur'ān's Place in Muslim Society.

    The Qur'ān plays a major role in Muslim societies in at least five realms. First, as the fundamental text of Islam, it is cited as the ultimate authority in all matters pertaining to religion. Thus the Qur'ān furnishes the basic tenets of Islam, the principles of ethical behavior, and guidance in general or specific terms for social, political, and economic activities.

    Second, the Qur'ān is used in liturgy. In each of the five obligatory prayers of the day, the opening surah of the Qur'ān, al‐Fātiḥah, is recited with other portions. During Ramadan, the month of fasting, the Qur'ān is recited in special prayers (tarawih) offered congregationally every night after the fifth and last prayer, usually with the goal of completing a recitation of the entire Qur'ān during the month.

    Third, the Qur'ān is used as a basic vehicle of education. A large majority of the world's Muslim population is non‐Arabic‐speaking, yet in most Muslim societies the first alphabetical system children learn is usually the Arabic, and they do so in order to be able to read the Qur'ān. Beginning with a primer, young students work up to reading through the Qur'ān, usually under the guidance of the local imām of the mosque. The completion of a child's reading of the Qur'ān is often celebrated publicly, with the child receiving gifts and being the center of attention. Special importance is attached to completing the first reading of the Qur'ān at an early age, and even in Western countries it is not unknown for a Muslim child to complete his or her first Qur'ān reading before entering public school at the age of five. The Qur'ānic education of children is not confined to mere reading of the text; it often includes inculcation of basic scriptural teachings.

    Fourth, the Qur'ān is an element of many nonliturgical social events. In ordinary conversation, some Muslims might swear by the Qur'ān in support of their statement or contention, whereas witnesses in courts of law swear by the Qur'ān that they will speak nothing but the truth. To complete a recitation of the Qur'ān (khatmat al‐ Qur'ān) at the death of a loved one is a custom in several parts of the Muslim world. Often, to invoke the blessings of God (tabarruk), the Qur'ān is recited at the start of a construction project or of shooting a film, at a school debate or a medical seminar, and even at political rallies and the commencement of parliamentary proceedings.

    Fifth, the Qur'ān has artistic uses. The art of reciting Qur'ānic verses in a beautiful voice (tajwīd) and the art of Qur'ānic calligraphy are among the most highly developed skills in Islamic culture. Most mosques have inscriptions from the Qur'ān, and tajwīd competitions at local, regional, and international levels are popular events, with good reciters often becoming celebrities and their Qur'ān recordings becoming bestsellers.

    The belief that all Muslims, even those who have never learned Arabic, should be able at least to read the text of the Qur'ān derives from the fact that the Qur'ān is regarded as the very word of God. The act of reciting the divine word is thus, in its own right, a good and pious act that brings blessings (barakāt). The disjunction between recitation and understanding produces the curious result that even in parts of the Muslim world that do not have a long history of Islamic scholarship, the art of recitation may be very highly developed; Malaysia and Indonesia are notable examples. In another area, the doctrine of i῾jāz (the inimitability or matchlessness of the Qur'ān) sets standards of linguistic excellence and makes an intimate knowledge of the Qur'ānic text—displayed in one's ability to recognize a Qur'ānic quotation or to cite verses appositely—a mark of good education.

    The Qur'ān in the Modern World.

    In modern times renewed emphasis has been placed on the Qur'ān as the fundamental source of guidance, though this has been interpreted in several ways. Some distinguish between the kernel and the husk of Islamic tradition, identifying the Qur'ān as the kernel and denying the normative value of the other religious sciences. Others seek to reassert the primacy of the Qur'ān in the hierarchy of Islamic sciences, pointing out that although theoretically the Qur'ān has always been the most important source of Islam, ḥadīth and sectarian fiqh (jurisprudence) have in practice relegated it to a secondary position, usurping its rightful position. Still others maintain that the masses need to be educated in Islam and that Qur'ānic learning should form the basis of this religious training. In the eighteenth century Shāh Walī Allāh of India, defying opposition, translated the Qur'ān into Persian, after which it was rendered into many regional and local languages of India. His primary aim was to make the Qur'ān accessible to the people, and his legacy in this regard has endured.

    In whatever terms the primacy of the Qur'ān is asserted today, a number of modern Muslim reformist thinkers have made the Qur'ān their main reference point. This is true of Sayyid Aḥmad Khān and Abū al‐Kalām ʿĀzād of India, Sayyid Abū al‐A῾lā Mawdūdī , of Pakistan, Sayyid Quṭb of Egypt, Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍa of Syria, and Ibn Bādīs of Algeria. All these writers chose the medium of Qur'ānic commentary to present their thoughts and ideas. What sets these commentators apart from others is the fact that, in addition to explaining the Qur'ānic text in a general way, they respond to modernity by developing an argument based on a careful selection and systematic interpretation of key Qur'ānic terms and concepts. Mawdūdī and Sayyid Quṭb, for example, develop at length the Qur'ānic notion of the conflict between Islam and jāhilīyah (non‐Islamic ignorance), extrapolating the notion from the Arabian context and presenting it as an enduring truth of history. In doing so they aim to show the relevance of the Qur'ānic message for the present and to motivate Muslims to play their role in history.The centrality of the Qur'ān in modern Muslim thought is also evident from the importance attached by scholars in law and other fields to developing a new principle of Qur'ānic interpretation. Fazlur Rahman has in several works stressed the need to take a fresh approach to the Qur'ān, because only such an approach can lift Muslims out of the intellectual morass in which they find themselves. In Islam and Modernity he proposes a process of Qur'ān interpretation that “consists of a double movement, from the present situation to Qur'ānic times, then back to the present” (p. 5). The important point here is not the details of this “double movement” but Fazlur Rahman's view of the pivotal role the Qur'ān can play in reorienting Muslim life and rejuvenating Muslim thought. This is a view on which Muslim scholars, for all their conceptual and methodological differences, would all agree.

    While a new, coherent principle of Qur'ānic interpretation for modern times that would serve as both a counterpart and a counterweight to the classical principle is yet to come into existence, it is nevertheless true that modern Qur'ānic interpretation differs from the classical analysis in some significant ways. For example, modern commentators, aware that they are writing for largely lay audiences, seldom expound at length the philological and theological aspects of the Qur'ānic text with which classical commentators were often preoccupied. Instead, they tend to deal with Qur'ānic teachings and ideas that have wider and more tangible sociopolitical implications and to help Muslim readers eager to learn how scripture can provide guidance on issues arising out of the impingement of modernity on Muslim lives and societies.

    Much of the global Muslim community now resides outside what has historically been thought of as the Muslim world. Western countries like Britain, France, Germany, and the United States are home to significant numbers of Muslims, including scholars who comprise indigenous converts as well as immigrants. Because of the exigencies of the situation of Muslims in the West, the interpretation of the Qur'ān by Muslim scholars living in the West has developed some new features. This interpretation, for example, emphasizes those verses of the Qur'ān that seem to privilege pluralistic over exclusivist perspectives, interpreting jihād, primarily, a struggle either against social ills or for spiritual perfection.

    In the Muslim world, the slow and sometimes nonlinear empowerment of women has given rise to the establishment of public study circles led and organized by women scholars. Such study circles have yet to win the approval of the religious establishment, but through the use of modern technologies such as the Internet, they have reached a wide audience and have been well received by ordinary Muslim women. One reason for the popularity of such study circles is that their teaching is conducted in a format and at a level that women find accessible. For example, the women teachers often explain Qur'ānic verses by citing examples from ordinary domestic life and invite participation in discussion, while avoiding the use of intimidating jargon.

    See also Abu Zayd, Nasir Hamid ; Aḥmad Khān, Sayyid ; Calligraphy; Ibn Bādīs, ῾Abd al Ḥamīd ; Jāhilīyah; Mawdūdī, Sayyid Abū al‐A῾lā ; Qur'ānic Recitation; Quṭb, Sayyid ; Rahman, Fazlur ; Rashīd Riḍa, Muḥammad ; and Wadud, Aminah

    Bibliography

    • Bennabi, Malek . Le phénomène coranique. Damascus, 1977 . Translated into English as The Qur'ānic Phenomenon. Salimiah, Kuwait, 1983 . Originally published in 1946 .
    • Cragg, Kenneth . The Pen and the Faith: Eight Modern Muslim Writers and the Qur'an. London: Allen & Unwin, 1985 .
    • Denny, Frederick Mathewson . Islam: Qur'an and Hadith. In The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective, edited by Frederick M. Denny and Rodney L. Taylor , pp. 84–108. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1985 . See especially pp. 94–97.
    • Denny, Frederick Mathewson . Qur'ān Recitation Training in Indonesia: A Survey of Contexts and Handbooks. In Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur'ān, edited by Andrew Rippin , pp. 288–306. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988 .
    • Esack, Farid . The Qur'ān: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oneworld, 2002 .
    • Nelson, Kristina . The Art of Reciting the Qur'ān. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985 . A new edition was published in Cairo and New York in 2001.
    • Rahman, Fazlur . Major Themes of the Qur'ān. Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980 .
    • Rahman, Fazlur . Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982 .
    • Robinson, Neal . Discovering the Qur'an: A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text. London: SCM Press, 1996 .
    • Tabataba'i, Muhammad Husain . The Qur'an in Islam: Its Impact and Influence on the Life of Muslims. London: Zahra Publications, 1987 .

    Mustansir Mir

    Commentaries on the Qur'ān

    Commentary on the Qur'ān is a genre that attempts to explain and elucidate the contents of the Islamic revelation. The Arabic word tafsīr means interpretation or exegesis, and it is commonly used to indicate this genre as well as the activity itself. As the direct word of God in Arabic “brought down” (revealed) to the Prophet Muḥammad, the Qur'ān is the central document of the Islamic tradition, and the tafsīr genre simultaneously interprets the Qur'ānic text and maintains or reinforces its status as sacred authority and divine revelation.

    A variety of tafsīr styles exists, but in its most essential form tafsīr consists of a section of Qur'ānic text, usually a verse (āyah), but perhaps a phrase or even a single word, followed by comments on the meaning and/or si