ASH‘ARĪ-SUNNĪ THEORIES OF QUR’ĀNIC MIRACLES: A STUDY OF DIVINE AND EVIDENTIAL SIGNS The genesis of an Islamic vocabulary on miracles can be traced to the Qur’ān, which conceived terminology, theological concepts and principles of evidential signs in The Poets, in the Qur’ān’s “challenge” verses (2:23; 10:38; 11:13; 17:88; 52:33), and on the occasions when the Qur’ān instances the workings of divinely wrought and evidential signs. The discourse of signs is central to the Qur’ān’s worldview, and the meaning, role and significance of such evidential signs are elaborated at great length and depth within the tafsīr tradition. In this study, I examine the theories of evidential signs that Ash‘arī-Sunnī mutakallimūn developed from Ash‘arī (d. 935) until Rāzī (d. 1210). I draw on Rāzī’s Qur’ānic commentary (Mafātīḥ al-ghayb), earlier theological sources (including Bayhaqī’s Dalā’il al-nubuwwa), and kalām texts from Ash‘arī until Rāzī to understand conceptualizations and systems of divine signs. Part one focuses on the ways that Ash‘arī-Sunnī mutakallimūn classify different signs (ayāt, mu‘jizāt, and karāmāt) effected by prophets, saints, sorcerers or magicians—signs which were sanctioned by scripture and tradition and which were considered credible and authoritative. I ask: how do Ash‘arī-Sunnī cosmological principles shape the ways that signs were defined and defended? How do principles such as the absence of remonstration (‘adm al-mu‘āraḍa) shape the ways that miracles were conceptualized and explicated? What does it mean, in the eyes of Ash‘arī-Sunnī mutakallimūn, for an audience to be disabled or rendered powerless to match an act brought by a prophet or any other worker of miracles? Part two examines the ways that Ash‘arī-Sunnī mufassirūn appealed to their system of divine and evidential signs to explain the historical instances of miracles referenced in the Qur’ān. Highlighting the osmosis of ideas between the kalām and tafsīr traditions—especially in the works of Rāzī—I illustrate how Ash‘arī-Sunnī authors applied their definitions and conceptualizations of miracles and invoked their defenses of them in order to explicate Qur’ānic discourse of divine signs.