‘A Precious Treatise’

How Modern Arab Editors Helped Create Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr

Bibliographic Data

ID22318447
AuthorsYounus Y Mirza (Georgetown University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume25
Issue1
Pages79-107
Publication date2023-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Qur'anic Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1465-3591 • E-ISSN: 1755-1730
PublisherEdinburgh University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3366/jqs.2023.0530
OpenAlexW4376880282
LanguageEN
References cited13

Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr (‘Introduction to the Principles of Qur’anic Hermeneutics’) is frequently used as a guide to the classical tafsīr tradition, and its hermeneutic is viewed as the normative way to understand the Qur’an. It is even presented as one of the ‘classics’ of the medieval Islamic tradition and one of Islam’s ‘great books’. This small treatise has inspired other works on the Qur’an, especially those which are more tradition based, such as those that seek to interpret the Qur’an through the Qur’an and the Prophetic tradition. However, this article demonstrates that the treatise was not historically one of Ibn Taymiyya’s major works, did not have a stable name, and was not copied or disseminated profusely. The various parts of the treatise operated independently of one another, with medieval scholars referencing different parts of it. It was only in the modern period when Arab editors ‘rediscovered’ the work and went through the process of editing, naming, commenting on, and publishing the treatise that it became such an essential factor in our contemporary understanding of the Qur’an. By tracing the endeavours of these editors, we better appreciate the nature of the treatise and how it has influenced modern Qur’anic interpretation

Arabic literature · Art · Epistemology · Fiqh · Hermeneutics · Islam · Linguistics · Literature · Normative · Publishing · Sharia · Theology · Classics · Families in Therapy and Culture · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOI