The recent two decades has seen an avalanche of new editions of medieval Qur’an commentaries. The newly published works are added to almost two centuries of publications in Tafsir, offering us a real opportunity to examine the breadth of the tradition through printed editions. As this material is piled up, the need for a paradigm that allows us to understand its historical development is becoming dire. One of the main problems of the field of Tafsir is that we lack an agreed upon periodization of the genre, even if a flawed periodization. This paper revisits the periodization of this genre and attempts to reflect on what has been offered and argues for a way forward. There are at least three major periodization schemas in Tafsir, and since they come from the Arab world, none of them have been adopted in the Western academia. Most Encyclopedic entries on Tafsir, has a tripartite division, early, medieval and modern, a hardly helpful schema. Muḥammad al-Dhahabī, author of the famous al-Tafsīr wa-al-mufassirūn, offered a three period division of the whole history of Tafsir – a division that was based on a Salafi understanding of hermeneutics. He valorized the early period and separated it to emphasize the role of the Salaf in the hierarchy of authority. His third period, the documentary period as he called it, covered the whole history of Tafsir from the time it was written down. Al-Fāḍil Ibn ʿĀshūr, the author of al-Tafsīr wa-rijāluhu, remains one of the most incisive historians of Tafsir. His book has a teleology that saw in al-Bayḍāwī’s Anwār al-tanzīl the pinnacle of the tradition; Tafsir was a history marching relentlessly to this author and his work. Ibn ʿĀshūr’s work was thus less concerned with periodization as with presenting an accurate historical depiction of the tradition. The third to offer a periodization of Tafsir was Ibrāhīm Rufaydah in his work al-Naḥwu wa-kutub al-tafsīr. This paper will use the periodization offered by Rufaydah as a basis to understand the history of Tafsir and in the process offer a more corrective understanding of the role of the Madrasa that was highlighted by Ibn ʿĀshūr. Moreover, the regional history of Tafsir, when and where did a region became dominant center (Nishapur, Cairo, and Istanbul) for the study and production of Tafsir, will be made central for the periodization.

Until very recently, the academic study of Qur’an commentary (Tafsir Studies) rarely addressed questions of gender in quranic exegesis, particularly when in pre-nineteenth century works. There are several reasons for this. These reasons tellingly illustrate how contemporary presumptions and concerns continue to shape the academic study of classical Muslim texts in detrimental ways. In Tafsir Studies, “gender” is usually treated as synonymous with “women”—which in turn means that it is typically treated as a marginal topic with little relevance to central questions of concern to the field. This dynamic is not unique to Islamic Studies. However, since the late nineteenth century when “women in Islam” was constructed as a cause célèbre by both colonial powers and Muslim reformers, the topic of “women” has remained politically charged—and also focused on polemics or apologetics about mostly legal questions. The effect of this on Tafsir Studies is such that research on gender in classical tafsir is often presumptively reduced to the history of interpretation of verses such as Q 4:34 (male authority, including wife-beating), and 24:31 (veiling), possibly including how quranic female figures fared at the hands of exegetes. Research on gender in classical Qur’an commentaries continues to be read in light of the ongoing polemics and apologetics about “women in Islam.” Even when a scholar produces a study which is designed to upend such presumptions, their work is read and heard against this background of controversy, swallowed up by it, and thus rendered mute. The field of Tafsir Studies urgently needs an intervention to enable it to move beyond this rut. This paper constitutes such an intervention, both arguing for and modeling a reorientation of the field. First, it decentres “our” presumptions of what gender is, showing that premodern exegetes were working from significantly different assumptions. Then, utilizing several hadiths on grammatical and legal matters which appear in early (8th century CE) exegetical works and continue to be quoted in a number of early and late medieval Qur’an commentaries as case studies, it will demonstrate that reading with gender as a lens sheds light on some questions which are central to Tafsir Studies. Among such questions is how interpretive authority is constructed and reconstructed through the exegetical process, as well as how we understand the multifaceted textual functions of the hadiths which are cited in classical tafsir works.

In discussions of the genre boundaries of classical tafsir, Jane Dammen McAuliffe describes al-Zamakhshari (d 538/1144) as one of the most frequently cited sources in the Sunni tafsir tradition (McAuliffe 2003, 445). Al-Zamakhshari’s commentary on the Qur’an remains one of the most glossed upon tafsirs in Islamic history and has a prominent place in medieval Islamic curriculums (Saleh 2013, 218). Al-Zamakhshari’s Kashshaf in many ways represents classical tafsir according to Norman Calder’s definition: he comments upon the whole of the Qur’an in segments, offering glosses that employ ‘ulum al-Qur’an as a measure including linguistic analysis, and citing previous authorities (Calder 1993, 103). Despite being extensively commented upon, one story from al-Zamakhshari’s tafsir is regularly excised from ensuing tafsir literature: the story of the blinded clever man. Surprisingly, the story is revived and expanded upon in Jalal al-Din Rumi’s (d. 671/1273) Mathnawi-i Ma’nawi. The Mathnawi represents for many the height of classical Persian Sufi poetry. It sometimes makes use of the Qur’an as proof-text but is not often considered a work of tafsir in itself (Mojaddedi 2017, 435). Some scholars have described the Mathnawi, not as tafsir, but as “the Qur’an in Persian,” indicating its Qur’anic overtones but highlighting its departure from the text of the Qur’an (Mojaddedi 2017, 432). While distinct from classical modes of tafsir, Rumi’s Mathnawi converges with al-Zamakhshari’s Kashshaf in key ways that are useful to studies of genre boundaries in tafsir studies. Using the story of the blinded clever man as a case study, this paper offers a critical analysis of the reception history of al-Zamakhshari’s tafsir of Surat al-Mulk. Following the reception history of this particular tale helps us trace the contours of diverging Arabic and Persian genealogies of tafsir, while offering opportunities to emphasize where the two traditions may have converged.

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.

The gaze, or the act of seeing the other and the awareness of being seen, has a storied history in the Islamic tradition. In the Qurʾān, the gaze or glance (naẓar), along with the “amorous eye” and its attendant curiosity, is associated with the “lust of the eye” and its corruption of the heart. The indulgence of the concupiscent gaze is most often also presented as the first inauspicious step toward perpetrating the grave sins of fornication or adultery. The Qurʾān instructs the believing men and women to avert their gaze from those of the opposite sex in order to preserve their chastity and thereby ensure their salvation. This thematic study examines the exegetical literature (tafsīr) on Qurʾān 24:30–31 and the concomitant Muḥammadan traditions, or exegetical ḥadīṯ, on the gaze as concupiscent curiosity in medieval Sunnī Islam.