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ISIM anticipates tri-languages for the conference; Malay, English and Arabic eitherOral or Poster Presenter.

: . :

:The last of the Nishapuri school of tafsir: al-Wahidi and his significance in the history of Qur'anic exegesis

Author:Walid A. Saleh

Year:2006

Publication:Journal of the American Oriental Society

Volume:126

The last of the Nishapuri school of tafsir: al-Wahidiand his significance in the history of Qur'anic exegesisby Walid A. Saleh stract:

When asked why he would not write a Qur'an commentary, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111)is said to have replied, "What our teacher al-Wahidi wrote suffices." This story was first reportedby al-Yafi'i (d. 768/1367), who did not divulge the identity of his source. (1) Yet there is noreason not to accept this statement as historical. We have supporting evidence from al-Ghazali's works which clearly shows that he admired the works of al-Wahidi. (2) Medievalbiographers were certain that al-Ghazali borrowed the titles for three of his fiqh works from

those of al-Wahidi's three Qur'an commentaries. (3) But a historian is nevertheless bound to askif such praise was warranted and not occasioned by mere decorum: the writers werecontemporary, both Shafi'ites from the same region, and both patronized by the same regime,the Saljuqs (and specifically by the vizier Nizam al-Mulk and his brother). (4) Even so, al-Wahidi's is a surprising name for al-Ghazali to choose, at least in light of what we know of thehistory of Qur'anic exegesis. Al-Wahidi does not come to mind when one conjures up names ofillustrious medieval Qur'an commentators; his Asbab nuzul al-Qur'an (The Occasions ofRevelations), the work that secured his reputation in the modern era, is not a book the authorhimself was proud of, nor could one entertain the notion that it was at the root of al-Ghazali'sadmiration. It is, however, reasonable to consider al-Ghazali's statement as his own judgmenton the field of Qur'anic studies. Such an assessment by a figure like al-Ghazali forces us to lookmore carefully at al-Wahidi, to try to find what al-Ghazali found impressive. But can we assess

al-Wahidi's legacy? This article will offer an intellectual biography of al-Wahidi, a survey of hissurviving works, and an initial analysis of his hermeneutical method. It will also show that hewas a towering intellectual figure of his time: both an exegete of pervasive influence andsurprising originality, and a critic whose commentary on al-Mutanabbi's poetry is still a standardwork.

I. INTRODUCTION

A major problem facing any scholar studying the history of tafsir is that many commentaries are

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still unedited. In the absence of any systematic attempt at publishing what survives of thismassive literature, one has to rely on a close inspection of what is available in variousmanuscript collections as well as in printed texts. (5) It is best to concentrate on a certainhistorical period and attempt a full description and analysis of the works produced therein.Scholars working on the early history of tafsir (the pre-Tabari phase) have recognized thesignificance of unpublished material for the history of this period. (6) Here we will call attention

to other periods in the history of this genre. (7)

'Ali b. Ahmad al-Wahidi al-Naysaburi (d. 486/1076) was an important author of tafsir who hasbeen neglected by western scholars and, to a lesser extent, in the Muslim world. My interest inal-Wahidi grew out of my work on his teacher al-Tha'labi (d. 427/1035) and my investigation ofthe reasons behind Ibn Taymiyah's (d. 728/1328) attacks on both writers. (He faulted both al-Tha'labi and, less so, al-Wahidi, for transmitting "weak" traditions.) (8) Having read extensiveparts of al-Wahidi's as yet unpublished major work, al-Basit (The Large Commentary), I amconvinced that it is one of the masterpieces of medieval Qur'an commentaries. Not only was it ofcrucial significance for the history of the genre, being widely influential--for example, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 606/1210) used al-Basit as a major source for his Mafatih al-ghayb--but it

promises to advance our knowledge of the language of the Qur'an itself, since it is one of theearliest exhaustive philological Qur'an commentaries to survive. (9)

But al-Wahidi's achievements do not end here. He produced two other commentaries, al-Wasit(The Middle Commentary) and al-Wajiz (The Short Commentary). Al-Wajiz held sway for morethan six centuries as the most accessible short commentary on the Qur'an, until the appearanceof Tafsir al-Jalalayn in the 10th/16th century, which was itself based on al-Wajiz. (10) Itcontinues to be popular and has been published repeatedly. (11) Al-Wasit was famously popularin the medieval period and has recently witnessed a comeback after being edited. (12) It hasbeen wrongly assumed that al-Wasit is an abridgement of al-Basit, a notion first opined in themedieval biographical dictionaries. (13) This is not the case. Each commentary is anindependent composition governed by different hermeneutical rules and assumptions. The

relationship among the three is itself a fascinating story that documents the tortured response ofa medieval mind to the problem of the meaning of the Qur'an. Fortunately all threecommentaries are accessible, and together with their introductions they offer us a uniqueopportunity to examine al-Wahidi's varying hermeneutical approaches. Later, I will give anexample from each commentary and show how they differ in their approach. If we add theintroduction to Asbab nuzul al-Qur'an we have four explicit statements by al-Wahidi as tomethods of Qur'anic interpretation. (14) That he saw the need to keep producing commentaries,each with a different approach, distinguishes al-Wahidi from most other classical exegetes. Iknow of no other scholar who wrote three independent commentaries that have survived. Theother extant examples are by scholars who wrote epitomes of their own major works.

What is perhaps most compelling about al-Wahidi is that he was at the center of the intellectual

life of his age. He was an outstanding critic who produced what was considered the bestcommentary on one of the most important Arabic poets, al-Mutanabbi (d. 354/955). Thus hissignificance must be seen in the light of his total literary production. He was well aware of theintellectual concerns of the elite and responded to the two fundamental texts of the culture inwhich he lived: the Qur'an and the poetry of al-Mutanabbi. (15) In his works we witness a criticalmoment in the hermeneutical history of medieval Islam, where the compromises worked out inthe first four centuries have become unraveled and must be reconstructed. Al-Wahidi's threeQur'an commentaries, with their different attitudes and conflicting methods of interpretation,foreshadow the agonized intellectual life of his younger contemporary al-Ghazali. His time was

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one of unsettled certainties, profound anxieties, and widespread intellectual alienation, all ofwhich were at the root of the creativity of the period. In this sense, the study of tafsir must beconducted within the wider realm of Islamic intellectual history; and any serious study ofintellectual trends in Sunni Islam must take into account the contributions and articulations ofthe exegetes, who were central to the formation of Islamic identity.

II. AL-WAHIDI, THE NISHAPURI SCHOOL, AND THE HISTORY OF QUR'ANIC EXEGESIS

I have argued elsewhere that the three Nishapuri exegetes Ibn Habib (d. 406/1015), al-Tha'labi(d. 427/1035) and al-Wahidi (d. 468/1076) constitute one of the more influential schools in thehistory of medieval Qur'anic exegesis, which I have termed the Nishapuri school. (16) By callingit a "school" I do not mean to suggest that this group maintained a uniform approach to theQur'an, but rather to characterize a concerted effort on the part of these scholars to come togrips with the problem of the Qur'an's meaning in the face of the conflict among traditionalexegesis, philology, and kalam theology. I have argued that the influence of this school was sopervasive that the medieval exegetical tradition does not make sense unless we take intoaccount the contribution of these scholars. In the introduction to his al-Burhan fi 'ulum al-Qur'an,arguably the most important Sunni assessment of the genre, al-Zarkashi (d. 794/1392) mentions

the names of both al-Tha'labi and al-Wahidi as well as of the scholars who were influenced bytheir methods (al-Zamakhshari, al-Razi) when giving examples of different modes ofinterpretation. (17) There is rarely a classical assessment that fails to mention al-Tha'labi or al-Wahidi, even when the tone is hostile and intended to undermine their contributions. In hisattempt to redirect the course of the medieval exegetical tradition, Ibn Taymiyah targeted al-Tha'labi and al-Wahidi above all for what he considered an unsound approach to the Qur'an.(18)

Al-Tha'labi and al-Wahidi attempted to answer the perennial question facing classical exegesis:what place does philology have in this enterprise? I believe that the pressing issue in the historyof classical Qur'an commentary was the challenge posed by the Arabic philological disciplines(the sum total of grammar, lexicography and rhetorical studies) to the integrity of the theological

understanding of the Qur'an. The philological tools perfected by Arabic grammarians were usedfreely in analyzing poetry, especially pre-Islamic poetry, since no religious constraints were atwork. (19) Pre-Islamic poetry was by definition a heathen corpus in which one expected to comeacross impieties, and religious scruples were hardly an issue in interpreting this body ofliterature. Philology was thus the sole and undisputed method for interpreting poetry. Usingphilology to interpret the Qur'an, and the pretence by Sunni exegetes that Qur'anic exegesiswas primarily a philological enterprise, brought new problems for the exegetical tradition.Philology, though its initial impetus lay in the attempt to understand the Qur'an, grew to becomean independent discipline that would pose grave danger to Sunni hermeneutics. (20) Therecould not be two philological methods, one for poetry and one for the Qur'an, and scholarstrained in philology were keenly aware of this problem. (21)

Muslim exegetes reacted to the rise of philology as an independent discipline by positing twoaxioms about the Qur'an. The first was to claim that theological and pietistic interpretationscould be defended by philology, and that therefore philology was on the side of a Sunniunderstanding of the Qur'an. The second was to posit a miraculous linguistic element in theQur'an--its i'jaz, its inimitability--as its characteristic feature. So viewed, the Qur'an was a classiclike the pre-Islamic poetry of the philologists. We must see these commentators as activelyseeking to replace the corpus of classicism in the emerging culture with their own corpus, theQur'an. The Qur'an was Sunni when read using philology, and of equal significance, the Qur'anwas as profoundly sublime as any of the pre-Islamic poetry, if not more so. Eventually, the

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Qur'an would come to replace Jahili poetry as a mine for linguistic exemplars in the Arabicgrammar handbooks. The doctrine of the Qur'an's inimitability would win the day, insofar as noMuslim sect would challenge this doctrine, despite the muffled complaints of some intellectuals.

The first part of this compromise, whereby philology was seen as the handmaid of Sunnism,

would come under continuous strain, almost from the moment it was conceived, until it waseventually called into question by the time of Ibn Taymiyah. Al-Wahidi was one of the fewmedieval exegetes who attempted to salvage the integrity of the Sunni hermeneutical enterpriseby siding with philology and dropping the pretence that a Sunni reading can consistentlywithstand the probing of philology. This was no doubt a bitter cup to drink, and all indicationspoint to al-Wahidi's continuous intellectual crisis, as shown by his repeated publications in tafsir.His was a life spent writing commentaries, in which hermeneutics was the promised gate tosalvation.

Another important factor that tafsir had to deal with was the rise of kalam theology as anindependent discipline and its integration into Sunnism as a component of its paradigm. (22)Tafsir responded to this trend by incorporating kalam elements and explicitly making theology a

pronounced component of the genre. It is not that tafsir was not theological--it was primarilytheological--but scholastic theology, with defined terms and concepts, began to make inroadsinto tafsir. The trend was started by al-Tha'labi, who attacked both the Mu'tazilites and theShi'ites; al-Wahidi would see to it that theology became an essential part of his al-Basit, andwould eventually be at the heart of al-Razi's commentary.

Al-Basit, al-Wahidi's major work, came at a crucial moment in the history of Qur'anic exegesis.Sunnism, and to some extent Ash'arism as well, flourished as the Saljuqs gained momentumand Sunni scholars became more daring. Conceived when al-Wahidi was still young,impetuous, and resolute, al-Basit attempted to give the philological method as free a rein aspossible. Coming to exegesis from classical Arabic philology, al-Wahidi seems to have beensurprised by the amateurish approach of many exegetes before him. He proceeded to function

under the presumption that philology supports a Sunni reading of the Qur'an which should notbe undermined by allowing it to mingle with non-philological readings. There was anunprecedented resolve in al-Wahidi's attempt to discard what were, to him, unfounded methodsof understanding the Qur'an; but his approach was eventually modified, as he seems to havedecided that if the Sunni inherited traditions as to what the Qur'an means could not be jettisoneden masse, they could nevertheless be evaluated, and philology would be the judge. Al-Basit isin this sense a peculiar text, since in order to appreciate its significance fully one has to delveinto the biography of its author and understand his intellectual background and training, and hisintention. Moreover, one has to place this text in the history of Qur'anic exegesis in order togauge its importance. And since al-Basit is at variance with al-Wahidi's later approach to theQur'an, it must be understood in light of his other exegetical works. Eventually al-Wahidi saw histhree commentaries as constituting a whole, which had not been his intent when he first

embarked on the project.

III. AL-WAHIDI'S BIOGRAPHY

A. Modern Biographies

There is no dearth of biographies of al-Wahidi by modern Muslim scholars; three of his editedworks are each supplied with a biography, though with a tendency to rely on that by al-Sayyid

Ahmad Saqr in his introduction to Asbab nuzul al-Qur'an. (23) The latest is that of Dawudi, the

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editor of al-Wajiz. (24) We are also fortunate to have a detailed biography and a study of al-Wahidi's hermeneutical approach by Jawdat al-Mahdi (see n. 10). However, both these modernbiographies and al-Mahdi's study suffer from a lack of historical perspective and a refusal toadmit to development in al-Wahidi's career.

In European languages we have Brockelmann's succinct entry, (25) a more extensive biography

by Claude Gilliot, (26) and a sketch in an article by Asma Afsaruddin. (27) These biographies donot go beyond reporting what is available in the medieval biographical dictionaries, and theirpurpose is not analytical. Unfortunately, none of the scholars working in Europe or the UnitedStates seem to have taken note of the work of their counterparts in the Arab world. This is clearfrom Rudolph Sellheim's entry for al-Wahidi in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam([EI.sup.2]), which has factual mistakes that could have been avoided had he gone through themodern Arabic biographies and studies or, for that matter, taken the medieval biographicaldictionaries at their own word. And although one might differ with the analyses in the modern

Arabic sources, their authors have still collected all references as to the whereabouts of themanuscripts, have edited all but one of al-Wahidi's works, and have neglected no tidbit ofinformation about al-Wahidi in any medieval biographical source. This is not the place to discussthe relationship (or absence thereof) between Arabic scholars and their counterparts in Europe

and North America; but tafsir studies will remain heavily dependent on the work of thesescholars, who are editing and making available this massive literature. Inattention to their workresults inevitably in plowing the same ground.

Little is gained from a biography of al-Wahidi that does not situate him in his intellectualenvironment. More important is to chart the intellectual development of his career, which can bereconstructed because of our ability to date his works. I will outline here the most importantaspects of al-Wahidi's life, give a list of his extant works and a chronology of their publication bythe author, and discuss their relationship with one another. In so doing I will offer a preliminaryassessment of the significance of his works to the history of Qur'anic exegesis.

B. Sources

There are three sources for reconstructing al-Wahidi's life. Two are independent accounts byfellow scholars who knew him well. The first, by 'Ali ibn al-Hasan al-Bakharzi (d. 467/1075), hassurvived in the abridged recension of his biographical dictionary. (28) The second is by one ofal-Wahidi's students, 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi (d. 539/1135), which survives in two versions.Yaqut al-Hamawi has preserved the longer version, which has a list of al-Wahidi's workscompiled by al-Farisi not found in the abridged printed edition. (29) The third and most importantsource is al-Wahidi's own account of his educational history, an intellectual autobiography thatis part of his long introduction to al-Basit. (30) Parts of this autobiography were reproduced byYaqut in his entry on al-Wahidi. (31) Later biographical dictionaries have interesting informationto add to these sources, such as al-Yafi'i's mention of al-Ghazali's story; I will refer to this

information while reconstructing al-Wahidi's life.

We are fortunate that al-Wahidi was in the habit of writing colophons to his works, which give usthe dates of their publication. To my knowledge, three of these original colophons havesurvived. The first (never mentioned in the sources) I came across while collecting manuscriptsof al-Basit; (32) the second is in a copy of Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi preserved in al-Mawsil inIraq; (33) the third belongs to al-Wasit and appears in the new edition. (34) These colophons,along with internal evidence from al-Wahidi's remaining works, allow us to chart the chronologyof these works and give us a rare opportunity to follow the development of his career and offer

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an account of his intellectual growth.

C. Al-Wahidi's Life

One is first struck by al-Wahidi's early maturation. If we trust the dates given by medievalbiographers, he must have started his educational and academic career early in his life. Most

sources agree that he died in Jumada II 468/January-February 1076, when he was in hisseventies. If we assume he died when he was 75, then he was born around 393/1003. Hisprosody teacher, Ahmad b. Muhammad b. 'Abd Allah b. Yusuf al-'Arudi, died after 416/1025,when al-Wahidi was around 23; (35) his famous teacher al-Tha'labi died in 427/1035, when al-Wahidi was around 34. His apprenticeship with al-Tha'labi marks the end of his student life.Soon afterwards he began working on al-Basit; in his introduction to that work he makes clearthat he began writing it early in his life and after al-Tha'labi's death. (36) In his colophon to al-Basit he states that he finished the work on 20 Rabi' I 446/29 June 1054; (37) the work thustook almost two decades to complete.

Such was the impatience of his contemporaries for a publication on tafsir that he was forced towrite al-Wajiz before finishing al-Basit, as the introduction to this work makes clear. (38)

Between 446/1054, the year al-Basit was finished, and 462/1070, the year he finished hiscommentary on al-Mutanabbi, al-Wahidi finalized al-Wasit, whose colophon shows that it wascompleted in mid-Rajab 461/April-May 1069 (see n. 35). The introduction to his last work, Asbabnuzul al-Qur'an, refers to his three Qur'an commentaries as finished products. One cannotspeak of a single period in al-Wahidi's life that was more productive than another; he producedtwo of his most important works at different periods, and was active throughout his life.

Al-Bakharzi's Dumyat al-qasr, a collection of biographies of poets of the 5th/11th century whichincludes excerpts from their poetry, has, as far as I know, no entries for exegetes apart from thatfor al-Wahidi. The inclusion of al-Wahidi in a biographical dictionary on poets is an indication ofhis high standing. Al-Bakharzi, a Nishapuri and a friend of al-Wahidi, has left us a poignantreflection on his friend's career and aspirations, in which he comes across as a poet manque

who realized he had the faculty to appreciate great poetry but was himself not gifted as a poet.Al-Bakharzi informs us that al-Wahidi refused to publish his poetry, and that what he himselfwas able to quote were pieces recited in public when the author was still young and, one wouldsuspect, still hoping that the muse of poetry would one day oblige. It is a testament to al-Wahidi's literary taste that he spared himself the indignity of trying to be a poet, since whatsurvives of his poetry is painfully mediocre.

Al-Bakharzi is the first to hint that al-Wahidi was an unhappy man who suffered from a sense ofalienation and isolation from his contemporaries. This assessment is supported by the ratherdark tone of al-Wahidi's introductions to his works. There he typically assesses his age,measures its corruption, laments the decline of knowledge, and upbraids his contemporaries for

their banality. These topoi, although admittedly formulaic, should nevertheless be taken asreflecting al-Wahidi's state of mind. His contemporaries were quick to complain that he was onlytoo happy to denigrate other scholars, and in his introductions he showered disdain oneveryone. Indeed, in the introduction to al-Wajiz al-Wahidi is openly contemptuous of, and rudeto, his contemporaries en masse. It is easy to see why he felt an affinity for the self-aggrandizing poet al-Mutanabbi. One is left with the impression that apart from writing al-Basitand Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi, his two major works, he was forced to write the others for lessserious reasons: either to satisfy a mediocre audience, to put an end to shoddy scholarship, totry to mitigate the unease of his conscience regarding his hermeneutical position, or to ward off

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accusations of rebelliousness from his contemporaries.

D. Philology and al-Wahidi's Intellectual Formation

Few medieval scholars have left us as much information about their intellectual formation as hasal-Wahidi. His introduction to al-Basit charts the detailed history of his education, (39) first in

grammar, literature and prosody, and lexicography, i.e., the sum of the Arabic philologicaltradition as perfected by the 5th/11th century. He spent his formative years with grammariansand rhetoricians, read most of the diwans of the Arabic poets, studied the dictionary of al-Azhari(d. 370/980), and left no major work of poetry unread. The influence of his prosody teacher,

Ahmad b. Muhammad b. 'Abd Allah al-'Arudi (d. after 416/1025), on al-Wahidi's career isevident. As late as 462/1070, some four decades after al-'Arudi's death, al-Wahidi was still usingthe notes taken in classes with this teacher in his commentary on al-Mutanabbi's poetry. (40) Al-'Arudi was a major influence on this commentary; and it was he who pushed al-Wahidi to studytafsir with al-Tha'labi.

Al-Wahidi also informs us that he read all the works of the major grammarians with theoutstanding teachers of his age. His pedigree in the philological sciences ensured him an entry

in the most illustrious of medieval biographical dictionaries devoted to grammarians, Ibn al-Qifti's (d. 646/1248) Inbah al-ruwat. (41) From what al-Wahidi tells us, his grammar teacher, Abual-Hasan 'Ali b. Muhammad al-Quhunduzi, took exceptional care in his education and was veryfond of him. (42) Al-Wahidi suggests that this teacher recognized in him the greatness to come.(43) It is in relation to al-Quhunduzi that al-Wahidi mentions the word "happiness," an indicationof the degree of his fondness for and personal attachment to this teacher.

Al-Wahidi also studied with itinerant scholars who passed through Nishapur, such as thegrammarian Abu al-Hasan 'Umran b. Musa al-Maghribi (d. 430/1038), who hailed from thewestern Islamic world. (44) He also studied variant Qur'anic readings with the leading scholarsof the age. (45) He traveled through the eastern Iranian provinces in search of hadithknowledge. This can be confirmed from the isnads (chains of transmission) to many of the

traditions cited in his works, in which he habitually mentions the year and the locale where heheard a certain tradition; they thus provide an invaluable source for reconstructing his travels.

In his introduction to al-Basit, al-Wahidi claims that the years he spent studying literature,poetry, grammar, language, and prosody were all in preparation for his study of tafsir, and not(apparently) for a career in poetry. I see al-Wahidi's turn to exegesis as the result of hisrealization that he was not going to be the poet he aspired to be. But there is no denying thatthe study of philology shaped him intellectually. In this he is rather exceptional among medievalexegetes, since he entered into the study of tafsir after being formed by philology. This isperhaps the most important aspect of his intellectual formation; it also explains his initialdistance from the exegetical tradition, which can easily be detected in al-Basit.

From the introduction to al-Basit we can determine that al-Wahidi spent the years from around416/1024 to 427/1035 studying exclusively with al-Tha'labi, (46) with whom he read all theliterature of tafsir as well as his teacher's own works. He thus had a formidable preparationencompassing both Arabic literary and philological works as well as tafsir. Yet he did not followin the footsteps of his teacher al-Tha'labi, whose encyclopedic approach, which insured thattafsir became an integrative discipline that refused to admit contradictions about the differentSunni hermeneutical traditions (philological, pietistic, narrative, mystical, etc.), was rejected byhis student. (47) Instead, each of al-Wahidi's commentaries attempted to solve the problem of

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Sunni hermeneutics from a different angle.

It is important to emphasize that al-Wahidi saw his preparation in philology as giving him anadvantage over many, if not all, earlier exegetes. The introduction to al-Basit makes clear thathe believed that grammar and literature were the foundation and the sine qua non of exegesis;(48) and insofar as they had not been used by previous exegetes, the works of the latter were

lacking. Indeed, he claims that the early layer of tafsir was itself in many ways in need ofexplication, so as to make clear in what sense it was an explanation of the Qur'an. Moreover, al-Wahidi is impatient with non-philological interpretations and decides neither to cite them nor torefute them, insofar as they are neither defensible by philology nor, indeed, possible. (49) Thus,unlike al-Tha'labi, who sought to draw on the collective Sunni tradition to write his Qur'ancommentary, using in the process at least a hundred works, (50) al-Wahidi claims that the worksof his predecessors were only an approximation of what the Qur'an said and not a trueexplanation.

The references in biographical dictionaries to a sharp-tongued al-Wahidi eager to attack andridicule earlier authorities reinforce my reading of him as a dissatisfied author who felt alienatedfrom his environment. Al-Farisi, in the longer version of his biography quoted by Yaqut, said that

al-Wahidi deserved all respect and honor and more, if only he had not been readily "willing toridicule and despise, sometimes all too subtly, the venerable preceding generations of scholars,and to unleash his tongue against people who deserve better; may God forgive him and them."(51) Al-Dhahabi gives an example of this tendency to defame; he quotes al-Wahidi as saying:"Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami [d. 412/1021] wrote Haqa'iq al-tafsir; and should he claim thatthis book is a commentary on the Qur'an, then he is an unbeliever." (52) Haqa'iq al-tafsir, one ofthe most famous mystical Qur'an commentaries, was both ridiculed and rejected by al-Wahidi.This attack must have been proclaimed in one of his public lectures, for no record of it exists inhis works; but there is no reason to doubt its veracity. Al-Wahidi, the champion of thephilological approach to the Qur'an, was hard pressed to accept the traditional Sunni exegeticaltradition, let alone the mystical approach. Al-Dhahabi would exonerate al-Wahidi, seeing noharm in so just an assessment against al-Sulami; however, al-Wahidi's scathing remarks were

apparently not enough to ingratiate him with Ibn Taymiyah (see above and n. 8).

In their assessment of this information modern Muslim scholars are eager to limit al-Farisi'sgeneral statement to the sole example of al-Wahidi's criticism of al-Sulami; (53) he is seen assimply attacking an indefensible method of interpretation. Yet to accept this analysis is to missthe true nature of what al-Farisi hints at. Al-Wahidi, in his disregard for the precedinggenerations of exegetes in the introduction to al-Basit, was seen by his contemporaries asmaking too harsh a judgment on the exegetical tradition and its authorities. Al-Farisi was all tooaware of what his teacher was up to. His contemporaries must have mounted a counterattack,for al-Wahidi would eventually moderate his position. The degree of this moderation is the cruxof the matter: was al-Wahidi convinced of the validity of his teacher's method, or was he simplysubmitting to a pious sentiment? I think both.

IV. AL-WAHIDI'S WORKS

Medieval biographers state that al-Wahidi was fortunate because his works were popular(ruziqa al-sa'adah fi kutubih), highly praised, and often mentioned in lectures by professors inseminaries. (54) A quick survey of medieval exegetical literature confirms this assessment andshows that he was a well-known author and a highly regarded exegete. (55) Sellheim's entry onal-Wahidi, mentioned above, has produced some confusion as to which of his works have

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survived and what exactly he composed, listing works and titles that do not now exist and forwhich there is no evidence for their existence. This confusion comes from Ahlwardt's catalogueof the Berlin Arabic collection, which Sellheim used as his main source. (56) Ahlwardt, writing inthe late nineteenth century when none of al-Wahidi's works had been published, had limitedresources with which to work. Moreover, he misunderstood a critical paragraph in al-Wasit,which I will discuss later. Modern scholars have inherited further confusion stemming from the

medieval manuscript tradition. Medieval scholars referred to al-Wahidi's three Qur'ancommentaries with the rubric "the one that contains the sum total of meanings" (al-hawi li-jami'anwa' al-ma'ani), (57) a phrase that found its way to the title pages of many manuscripts of al-Wasit and was eventually copied into modern biographies and catalogues as an independenttitle of yet another Qur'an commentary. (58) Some manuscripts have titles that are lateradditions, such as Jami' al-ma'ani, for al-Basit. (59) Mere reliance on catalogues of manuscriptcollections or, for that matter, on the title pages of manuscripts without inspecting the worksthemselves and comparing them to other confirmed works, has increased this confusion. Since Ido not want to enter into lengthy arguments as to why certain non-existent works could not havebeen written by al-Wahidi, here I will discuss only those works that have survived in manuscriptsand are attested by the tradition, whether in biographical dictionaries or as citations in otherworks, and which can be conclusively demonstrated to have been authored by al-Wahidi.

Before turning to that task, however, I shall investigate the claims of some modern Arabbiographers attributing certain works to al-Wahidi that have been published or are available inmanuscript collections. After examining the short epistle Fi sharaf al-tafsir (On the Nobility ofExegesis) that survives in a unicum, it is clear to me that it is not by al-Wahidi. The attributionwas the result of a mistake by one of the owners of the manuscript, which contains more thanone work; the owner listed the manuscript's contents on the cover page, and states that one ofthe epistles was by al-Wahidi. He must have been misguided by the fact that the epistle isanonymous and begins with the phrase "al-Wahidi said." The manuscript is now housed inCairo, Dar al-Kutub; on the cover page there is the note: "Risalah fi sharaf al-tafsir li-al-Wahidi."(60)

On inspection of a microfilm copy of the manuscript, and on reading the epistle, it becomesclear that the latter is directed against al-Wahidi's position as to the best way to interpret theQur'an, as expressed in his introductions to al-Wasit and Asbab nuzul al-Qur'an in which heclaims that the only way to interpret the Qur'an is through received traditions. (61) The epistle isa fascinating document which shows that medieval scholars were aware of the contradictionsbetween al-Wahidi's statements in this conservative introduction and in the introductions of histwo earlier works. Whoever wrote this epistle was a well-read scholar, for he was quick toridicule al-Wahidi's position in his later works by showing the impossibility of maintaining it whilewriting Qur'anic commentary. The incorrect information on the title page of this manuscript foundits way into the first catalogue of Dar al-Kutub, where it was noted by Jawdat al-Mahdi, the firstmodern scholar to mention this epistle, (62) and from there it crept into all the other Arabicbiographies of al-Wahidi.

Al-Wasit fi al-amthal, edited by 'Afif 'Abd al-Rahman, has been shown by Dawudi and Sellheimnot to be by al-Wahidi. (63) Ramadan Sesen's claim that the Kitab al-maghazi, a raremanuscript in Istanbul, is by al-Wahidi is impossible to verify, since neither does the manuscriptcontain this attribution nor does Sesen offer internal evidence to support his claim. (64) The onlyother works that might be by al-Wahidi are two short epistles housed in al-Maktabah al-Khalidiyah in Jerusalem, which I have been unable to inspect. (65)

A. Al-Wahidi's Extant Works

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Both the available manuscripts and the biographical dictionaries, whether in entries on al-Wahidior on later scholars who read and studied his works, are unanimous in mentioning only threeQur'an commentaries: al-Basit, al-Wasit, and al-Wajiz. That these have survived testifies to thehigh regard in which they were held. Adding to these the Asbab nuzul al-Qur'an and the SharhDiwan al-Mutanabbi, there are only five surviving works that can definitely be ascribed to al-

Wahidi. Readers interested in his lost works may consult any of the introductions to the printededitions. (66)

Al-Wahidi has left us a categorization for his output in tafsir that explains his understanding ofthe genre and the reason why he wrote three different compilations. The paragraph, a mere 47words, is, despite its deceptively simple language, not readily comprehensible; and hasgenerated some confusion. I will offer my understanding of this paragraph, which is part of theintroduction to al-Wasit, and was thus written with the confidence of hindsight and, one mightadd, with the intention to justify his scholarly output. (67) Here al-Wahidi states that he hasdivided and collected the exegetical material into three groups (majmu'at): first, that based onphilological understanding, or what he calls "meanings" (ma'ani al-tafsir); second, materialinherited from the early generations or which has come to be accepted because it is based on

hadith methodology (musnad al-tafsir); and third, paraphrastic or abridged material (mukhtasaral-tafsir). These are to be understood as three different methods of exegesis, the result of threedifferent hermeneutical approaches, and not, as Ahlwardt and the modern Arab editors tookthem, as titles of lost exegetical works. (68) The majmu'at (collections) are files which containhis notes on tafsir and are quite apart from his books; they are, of course, not available. (69)There is a correspondence between these categories and his books: al-Basit is for ma'ani, al-Wajiz for abridged material, and al-Wasit for musnad material. It is testimony to the medievalscribal tradition and its encyclopedic knowledge that it gave al-Basit the title Jami' [or Jami'] al-ma'ani, an epithet inspired by this paragraph.

What al-Wahidi does not tell his readers is that at a certain moment in his life, when he was

young and less inhibited, he had refused to include inherited material (musnad al-tafsir) in hispublished writings if it did not withstand the tests of philology. Thus this paragraph must beunderstood as an attempt to rectify his earlier decision to neglect a certain part of the exegeticalmaterial, and to claim that his intention was always to produce three types of works reflectingthree types of exegesis. Al-Wahidi is thus trying to understand and to harmonize his ownintellectual career for both himself and his readers. He no longer claims that unsoundinterpretations of the Qur'an are to be rejected as belonging to a different order of interpretation,nor as corrupt statements (al-aqwal al-fasidah) and "base" interpretations (al-tafsir al-mardhul).(70) The impatience of al-Wahidi's youth is all but gone. One must then acknowledge that thecurrent assessment of al-Wahidi by modern Muslim scholars, who use his later production toassess his whole career, is not their own invention so much as al-Wahidi's self-assessment atthe end of his career. A reader of al-Wasit or Asbab nuzul al-Qur'an would hardly suspect that

the author of these highly conservative works also wrote a scathing critique of non-philologicalreadings.

Having examined al-Wahidi's own characterization of his intellectual output, I shall now give apreliminary assessment of his extant works.

1. Al-Basit (The Large Commentary). This is al-Wahidi's magnum opus and a masterpiece of theIslamic exegetical tradition. Begun soon after 427/1035, it was finished nineteen years later, asits colophon indicates (contrary to Sellheim's speculation that it was not completed; cf. n. 39). I

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have collected three different copies of the last volume of this work which include transcriptionsof the original colophon. Another complete copy, Nuruosmaniye nos. 236-240, written by asingle scribe, consists of five large volumes of around 1700 folios. (This copy was discovered byShihab Ahmad of Harvard University.) Likewise, al-Azhar's copy was originally in five volumes,but is now missing the second volume. Medieval biographical dictionaries speak of a sixteen-volume division of the work. (71) The only copy to reflect this division is the San'a copy;

unfortunately only three volumes of this magnificent copy survive. (72) Volumes of thiscommentary are also available in the libraries of Cairo, Basra, Damascus, Dublin, Istanbul,Rampur, and Rome.

Al-Wahidi's introduction to al-Basit, and his colophon, are important documents both for theirelucidation of his early hermeneutical approach and for the information they give about his lifeand education. Al-Basit represents the first attempt in tafsir to overcome the crisis facingQur'anic exegesis by charting a more thorough philological reading; it is the first explicit refusalof the mainstream solution, the encyclopedic approach pioneered by al-Tabari and perfectedand popularized by al-Tha'labi. Another aim is to give a consistently Ash'arite reading of theQur'an's theology against the Mu'tazilite interpretation, a major goal of the Nishapuri school. Al-Razi's kalamization (for want of a better word) of tafsir was a direct continuation of what al-

Tha'labi and al-Wahidi pioneered.

Jawdat al-Mahdi is the only modern scholar to study al-Basit as part of his general analysis ofal-Wahidi's hermeneutics. However, he misses the significance of this work by refusing to seeits radical position vis-a-vis the previous exegetical tradition. Al-Mahdi presents a synchronicanalysis of al-Wahidi's literary corpus without admitting or entertaining the idea that this outputmight have been contradictory and occasioned by different concerns at different times in theauthor's life (although he was the first to offer an interpretation of al-Wahidi's career). Al-Wahidiis presented as the perfect Sunni commentator who followed the paradigm of Ibn Taymiyaheven before Ibn Taymiyah! He overlooks or omits the crucial paragraph in al-Wahidi'sintroduction; (73) while quoting it in full, he never hints at al-Wahidi's attack on non-philologicalinterpretations. (74)

I have been collecting copies of manuscripts of al-Basit in preparation for a critical edition, in thehope that this will help to elucidate the history of the medieval exegetical tradition. It is animmense work and is difficult to characterize fully; more time is needed to describe its innerworkings. Since it took almost two decades to complete, the question of inner developmentmust be addressed, especially in view of al-Wahidi's constant intellectual struggle regarding thebest method of exegesis.

2. Al-Wasit (The Middle Commentary). Conceived sometime during the writing of al-Basit, thiswork represents al-Wahidi's return to the fold of the classical method and its catholichermeneutical approach to the Qur'an which his master al-Tha'labi had perfected. The material

rejected from al-Basit forms the center of this work. The first reference to al-Wasit that I havefound comes at the end of al-Basit, (75) where al-Wahidi refers the reader to another Qur'ancommentary containing material omitted from the current work; thus sometime before finishingal-Basit, al-Wahidi must have begun work on al-Wasit, collecting material that did not make itinto al-Basit because it was deemed non-philological. Al-Wasit is thus a compilation ofreconciliation. The title itself can be read as a pun, both as the "middle" and the "go-between."Yet one can argue that the reconciliation is half-hearted, or at least a botched attempt to correcta previous position; al-Wahidi simply relegated musnad material to this work, and thus madeclear what he had left out of al-Basit. His refusal to follow the encyclopedic approach is itself a

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statement; his separation of different ways of doing tafsir in different works undermined theencyclopedic solution that the Sunni tradition--particularly the practice of his teacher al-Tha'labi--devised to save the coherency of the meaning of the Qur'an.

Al-Wasit enjoyed widespread popularity among the medieval scholarly community. In less thantwo hundred years the manuscripts of this work had become so multiplied (and so corrupted)

that one scholar, Isma'il b. Muhammad al-Hadrami (d. 677/1278), undertook to correct thecopyists' mistakes in their transmission of the work. He wrote a sort of critical apparatus in theform of a book, (76) an honor not usually accorded to tafsir works. (For recent critical editions ofal-Wasit, see n. 12; the introduction and the interpretation of Sura 1 have also been editedseparately. (77)) It is unfortunate that the editors of al-Wasit did not use the incomplete copy ofthe work in Berlin (Spr. 415, Spr. 416). The significance of this copy is that it has a riwayatsama' (or chain of transmission), from the author to the scribe.

3. Al-Wajiz (The Short Commentary). Al-Wajiz is the first medieval short commentary on theQur'an; it was explicitly written in response to popular demand for a handy work. Al-Wahidi wasconscious of writing something new. (78) Al-Ghazali's decision to highlight the aptness of thelength of this work also points to the scarcity, if not absence, of any such commentary. (79) Al-

Wahidi was thus an innovator. The aim of the work is to present a mono-valent reading of theQur'an, depending on Ibn 'Abbas's traditions or on those of others of his rank. In the case of adifficult word, which presumably would not have an interpretation from these early authorities, italso aims to supply a gloss. (80)

4. Asbab nuzul al-Qur'an (Occasions of Revelation). Asbab nuzul al-Qur'an is the last of al-Wahidi's works that has reached us. Undoubtedly this is the most popular, and also the mosthermeneutically conservative, of his works. (81) Rarely does a year pass without a new printing.These are either plagiarized reprints of the critical edition of al-Sayyid Ahmad Saqr, without thecritical apparatus, or reprints of al-Babi al-Halabi and other early Egyptian printings. (82)

The significance of this work lies in its staunchly conservative introduction. Al-Wahidi is adamant

that the information about when and where and why a verse was revealed is not a matter forspeculation but of received knowledge. (83) One is not supposed to offer guesses or opinionson this matter. The bellicose tone is problematic; I take it to indicate al-Wahidi's ambivalencetowards his earlier approach. Yet a conservative al-Wahidi does not imply a humble soul. Heinforms us that this work was meant for students and dilettantes who need a sort of elementarytafsir, in which an approach involving narrative and historical contextualization is used to guidethem. He laments that he is forced to write such "works for beginners" since all efforts to raisethe level of interest in the sciences of the Qur'an have been of no avail. (84) But the significanceof Asbab nuzul al-Qur'an should not be overlooked; it was the first work of its kind that bothpopularized this form of tafsir and gave the genre a model to emulate. (85)

5. Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi. Al-Wahidi's Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi is considered the finest ofthe commentaries on this poet; (86) this assessment is highly significant, for commentators onal-Mutanabbi include the poet Abu al-'Ala' al-Ma'arri (d. 449/1058), the philologist (and thepoet's student) Ibn Jinni (d. 392/1002), and a host of other illustrious names. Remarkably, thereare no studies on this work. It is regrettable that Ihsan 'Abbas did not discuss this work in hisstudy of Arabic literary criticism (see n. 15). It was first edited by F. Dieterici in 1861 (see n. 19),and this edition has been reprinted repeatedly in the Arab world. The work permits areconstruction of a list of works of poetry read by al-Wahidi. The question remains as to why al-Wahidi, who spent his life commenting on the Qur'an, decided to write a work of literary criticism

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so late in his career. In the introduction to his commentary, he recalls his early days, when hewas the unsurpassed master of the art of prosody. The main reason he gives for writing thework is that there was no satisfactory commentary on al-Mutanabbi that merited reading. (87) Istill believe that al-Wahidi's great love was poetry; unable to create it, he was unable to be farfrom it.

V. AN EXAMPLE OF AL-WAHIDI'S HERMENEUTICAL APPROACH

Here I will give an example of al-Wahidi's approach to the Qur'an from al-Basit, compare it tothat of other exegetes, and compare how he dealt with the same verse in al-Wasit and al-Wajiz.The example is only crudely illustrative, but it will underline the importance of discarding thenotion that medieval exegetes were mere copiers of one another without distinctive, or evenradically different, methods of interpreting the Qur'an. The idea that this massive literature wasmotivated by mere compulsive copying, and not by profound intellectual concerns, is untenable.The development of philology meant that the exegetes were always at one remove from atheological catastrophe should they allow philology to dominate. There is a tension through thetafsir enterprise whose source is the ever-ominous ability of philology to dismantle suspiciousreadings at any moment.

Qur'an 93:7--"Did he not find you [Muhammad] unguided [or "astray"; dallan] and guide you?"--has presented problems to exegetes by raising the issue of Muhammad's religious backgroundbefore he became a prophet. (88) How exegetes responded to this verse may be the litmus testof their willingness to allow the language of the Qur'an to hint at possibilities not sanctioned bySunni theology, which had moved to sanctify Muhammad and ascribe infallibility to his life anddeeds. I have discussed elsewhere how al-Tabari, al-Tha'labi, and al-Zamakhshari dealt withthis verse, and will here simply compare how al-Wahidi's approach differs. (89) The need tocompare exegetes stems from the fact that tafsir is a genealogical literature, and must bestudied in a synoptic fashion; in order to understand fully what a certain exegete was doing wemust compare him to previous exegetes who influenced him, as well as to those who came afterhim. This type of synoptic study allows us to go beyond the impression of repetitiveness that

many readers experience when dealing with tafsir, an impression that has impeded thescholarly appreciation of the richness of this genre and the awareness of its hermeneuticalcomplexity.

Al-Tabari and al-Tha'labi, despite their markedly different approaches to the verse, skirt thebasic issue: what was the nature of Muhammad's belief before his prophecy? They refuse toaddress the question of Muhammad's pagan background. Though both are aware of theproblematic word dallan, they never confront it head on. Indeed, one can document a trend todistance Muhammad from any taint of pre-Islamic religious affiliations. Despite the fact that bothquote al-Suddi's famous interpretation of this verse--that Muhammad "was on the affair [or:followed the religion] of his people for forty years"--they refuse to tell us what this means.

Al-Zamakhshari offers what has become the standard Sunni understanding of this verse:Muhammad was ignorant of the "science of divine law" ('ilm al-shari'ah) and that "which is basedon received knowledge (sama')" before his prophecy. This interpretation appears to fullydisclose the meaning of dallan, but in fact merely asserts historical truth about Muhammad thatis not in dispute: He could not have been aware of the laws and revelation before they weredispensed to him by God. Nothing is said about his belief in one God or many before receivingrevelation. After summarizing the stories related by al-Tha'labi that tell of episodes in whichMuhammad was supposedly lost, al-Zamakhshari moves on to the crux of the matter: al-Suddi's(d. 127/745) phrase that Muhammad was "on the affair" of his tribe for forty years.

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[For] those who stated that Muhammad was "on the affair of his tribe"for forty years, and mean that Muhammad was oblivious to revealedsciences ('ulum al-sam'iyah), as his people were, then thisinterpretation is valid; but if they mean that he was a follower of

his tribe's religion and a pagan like them, then this is absolutelywrong (literally: "God forbid!"). For prophets should be infallibleand free of sin before and after their call to prophecy, whether ofminor or major sins--let alone the possibility of a prophet being anunbeliever (kafir) and ignorant of God. It would be a fataldisadvantage for a prophet to have been a pagan since this wouldundermine his position with the pagans when disagreeing withthem. (90)

Here we have an interpretation of an interpretation performed in order to preserve the sanctityand integrity of the doctrine of Muhammad's infallibility. Not only did al-Zamakhshari not discussal-Suddi's interpretation; he mentions it only to refute it. Since a would-be prophet cannot beignorant of the Creator, any verse in the Qur'an that points to the contrary must mean

something else, regardless of what is actually says.

How does al-Wahidi interpret this verse in al-Basit? I offer a full translation of his interpretationbefore discussing its main features:

Ibn 'Abbas said: "God found you straying from prophecy (dallan 'anal-nubuwwah) and He guided you through prophecy to the best ofreligions and the most benevolent." Al-Hasan and al-Dahhak said: "Godfound you lost from the post-signs of prophecy and the rules of divinelaw, unaware of them and he guided you to them." This is supported byHis statements "And before it (the Qur'an) you were one of theheedless" [12:3] and "You (Muhammad) did not know what the Book is nor

faith" [42:52]. These interpretations are the opinions (madhhab) ofthe theologians (arbab al-usul) and the scholars of our camp ('ulama'ashabina); they believe that the Prophet, peace be upon him, was neveran unbeliever (kafir). Abu Ishaq [al-Zajjaj; d. 311/923] opted forthis opinion and stated that Muhammad did not know the Qur'an or thedivine law and was guided by God to the Qur'an and the laws of Islam.We have already discussed these matters when we dealt with God'sstatement, "You did not know what the Book is or what faith is"[42:52].

Some exegetes, however, opted to choose the literal (or apparent)meaning of the verse (zahir al-ayah). Thus al-Kalbi stated: "He foundyou unguided, that is, an unbeliever (kafir) among unbelievers, and He

guided you to monotheism." Al-Suddi said: "He (Muhammad) was on theaffair of his tribe for forty years." Mujahid said: "He found youunguided, that is unguided from guidance (huda) and He guided you toHis religion."People of our camp state that the meaning of this verse is

elucidated and corrected through received knowledge (yustadrakbi-al-sama'). Yet reason ('aql) does allow the possibility that anindividual who is an unbeliever may be blessed by God by bestowing onhim faith and honoring him with prophecy. It is also possible

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rationally that someone who is already a prophet might be divested ofthis rank. (91)

First, it is important to emphasize that al-Wahidi preserved early material, like the quotation fromal-Kalbi, that was either expurgated or simply never reported by earlier exegetes. This is rathersurprising, given al-Wahidi's late date; but scholars working on tafsir should be prepared for

surprises, given the colossal amount of material still unexamined. Late material--and one has inmind here the medieval glosses (hawashi) on the classical commentaries--might containquotations from early sources not preserved elsewhere. Second, al-Wahidi admitted that theapparent meaning (zahir al-ayah), i.e., the philological meaning of the verse is that before hiscall to prophecy Muhammad was a pagan, a kafir. More important is that al-Wahidi violated areligious taboo by reporting that some exegetes believed that Muhammad was an unbeliever,and reported their opinion without recourse to euphemisms or showing any evidentembarrassment. Further, al-Wahidi has to admit that for the mainstream Sunni position to hold,or, as he bluntly puts it, for this verse to mean what it does not mean, one may only haverecourse to received knowledge (sama'), which overrides even scripture. Finally, he mentionsreason ('aql) and what is possible and not possible according to rational thought. By contrast,the Mu'tazilite exegete al-Zamakhshari not only failed to admit the apparent meaning of the

verse, but disputed it, to say nothing of his not mentioning reason in connection with what sort ofindividual a prophet could or could not be. One would hardly expect a Sunni exegete who nevertires of attacking Mu'tazilite dogma to admit to rational possibilities contrary to his own position.(It should be kept in mind that one of al-Wahidi's main aims in al-Basit was to attacksystematically that Mu'tazilite understanding of the Qur'an, and to present a coherently Ash'ariteunderstanding.) Perhaps we have schematized Islamic intellectual history to the degree that wehave lost sight of the nuances that characterize any complex intellectual tradition. Taking theinterpretation of this verse alone, one could easily surmise that al-Zamakhshari was a staunchSunni, al-Wahidi a calm Mu'tazilite.

The discussion of Qur'an 93:7 as presented by al-Wahidi is thus centered on the admission thatits manifest or apparent meaning contradicts the Sunni understanding. Sunni Ash'arite scholars

were willing to concede that reason does not hold the supreme position in their system; but toadmit that the apparent or literal meaning of the Qur'an contradicted Sunni dogma, withoutsome safeguards, seems rather dangerous. Al-Wahidi, an Ash'arite, simply admits this fact.Thus, rather than performing unsound philological maneuvers to get rid of the problem, heboldly asserts that Sunni theologians have stated that received knowledge overrides the literalmeaning of the verse. Al-Wahidi is the only Sunni exegete I know of who reports that there wereSunni theologians who tackled the challenge posed by a philological reading of the Qur'an tothe Sunni understanding of what it means by placing explicit limitations on philology, despite thehitherto declared consensus among Sunni exegetes that philology is the enshrined tool forunderstanding the Qur'an. In this sense al-Basit is an ironic text; for while its declared intentionis to read the Qur'an philologically, it ends up admitting, at least in what I call theological meltingloci, that the tool of philology does not enjoy unlimited authority.

The genealogical nature of tafsir and the synoptic study of its history allow the investigator anopportunity to examine material which certain exegetes opted to omit. For certain exegetes wecan postulate a direct lineage of influence--say a teacher-student lineage, as is the case withthe Nishapur school--which permits us to make arguments from silence. We know that al-Wahidiread and studied al-Tha'labi's work with the author, and transmitted his Qur'an commentary toposterity. (92) We are thus in the position of being able to make conclusions based on theomissions and exclusions in al-Wahidi's own work. In the case of Qur'an 93:7 he opted to

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discard the pseudo-philological and mystical interpretations supposed by al-Tha'labi. Thus hereported no episodes in which Muhammad was physically lost and gave no mysticalinterpretation. This is not surprising, since in his introduction to al-Basit al-Wahidi makes clearthat he will not bother with interpretations that cannot be defended by using philologicalmethods. It is in this light that we have to understand the resignation in al-Wahidi's toneregarding al-Zajjaj's acceptance of the Sunni interpretation of this verse. To al-Wahidi, al-Zajjaj

was the paragon of the philological method, which meant refusing overt theologicalinterpretations when manifestly wrong; hence his surprise regarding al-Zajjaj's position on thisverse. Moreover, his disparaging attitude toward mystical interpretation is well known, as I havementioned.

The intricacy of al-Wahidi's interpretation can only be made meaningful through a totaldismantling of the history of Qur'anic exegesis and a close examination of the assumptions fromwhich he was escaping and by which he nevertheless remained shackled. His position towardthe Qur'an in al-Basit would place him apart from the mainstream Sunni attempt to reconciledifferent hermeneutical approaches in fashion in each of the various currents of Sunnism. Theintegrative approach pioneered by al-Tabari and enlarged by al-Tha'labi was devised to allowexegetes the maximum possible space for both defending Sunnism and making it mainstream.

Exegetes drew upon most of the available disciplines, both to normalize tafsir and to makeSunnism more palatable to the intellectuals. Thus the compromise that Sunnism offered in theclassical form of tafsir was overturned in al-Basit. Al-Wahidi's insistence that philology can andshould act as a judge of the validity of inherited interpretations forced others to accuse him ofshowing contempt and disrespect to earlier authorities. But al-Wahidi ameliorated his position ashe matured, for in al-Wasit he gave the musnad, or traditional material, the dominant, if not theonly, voice. His interpretation of Qur'an 93:7 in al-Wasit is as follows:

He found you lost from the post-signs of prophecy and the rules ofdivine law, unaware of them, and He guided you to them. This issupported by His statement, "And before it (the Qur'an) you were oneof the heedless" [12:3], and His statement "You (Muhammad) did not

know what the Book is nor faith" [42:52]. Al-Zajjaj opted for thisopinion and stated that Muhammad did not know the Qur'an or the divinelaw and was guided by God to the Qur'an and the laws of Islam. (93)

It is clear that al-Wahidi has dropped the minority position--the possibility of Muhammad'spolytheist past--and presented what one might call a reformed Sunni interpretation. It is true thathe was hiding behind al-Zajjaj's endorsement, but this is hardly convincing; in al-Basit philologywas the authority and not al-Zajjaj, dear as he was to al-Wahidi. Al-Wasit was thus not anepitome of al-Basit, despite the fact that the paragraph quoted above is culled from al-Basit.This is also an example of the paradox of the genre of tafsir: the same statement about al-Zajjaj's position has two different meanings because of the context. In the tafsir context it iswhat tells us what an author was trying to say and not merely what he was saying, anotherreason why a synoptic study of tafsir is obligatory. The interpretation of 93:7 in al-Wajiz is, as

expected, shorter; it simply consists of the first three lines quoted above. (94) If we take al-Wahidi's position in al-Wajiz as representing his understanding of how this verse should beunderstood, since he wrote al-Wajiz before finishing any of his other commentaries, we have toadmire his intellectual integrity, for he remained faithful to the principles of the introduction to al-Basit and presented a philological reading of 93:7, despite his change of heart. Al-Wahidi'scontinuous output in tafsir reflects his hesitation as to the doctrinal validity of his initial solution:that philology is the only yardstick for tafsir. In this sense one could speak of the agony causedby grammar and the triumph of piety in al-Wahidi's later life. His output in tafsir cannot be readas the reflection of one position vis-a-vis the Qur'an, but as the result of a continuous struggle to

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solve the problem that philology posed to the Sunni understanding of it.

CONCLUSION

The survival of a substantial number of al-Wahidi's works offers us a unique opportunity to studythe intellectual formation of this medieval commentator and allows us to reconstruct his

hermeneutical theories. It is rare that we have access to such a varied output on tafsir by asingle author. This article has laid the foundation for further investigation into his works. Itshould also be evident that any study of this exegete must incorporate his commentary on al-Mutanabbi. The relationship between Qur'anic commentary and literary commentary has so farbeen little studied, a rather unfortunate omission since philology was the dominant form ofdiscourse among the elite of medieval Islamic culture.

The poignancy of al-Wahidi's life is that it started with a failed attempt to write poetry and endedinstead with a commentary on the most admired of Arabic poets. There is also an irony in hisscholarly life: he was caught in the classicism of high Arabic culture at a period when thecultural landscape was changing dramatically. Poetic creativity was moving away from anengagement with pre-Islamic and early Islamic modes to one with mysticism. Moreover, al-

Wahidi's compatriots in eastern Iran had begun using the Persian language to write poetry. Hewas one of the last holdouts in a culturally transformed landscape. His radical attempt atreforming tafsir was itself thwarted by his later conversion to the method of his teacher. Hisinfluence on the later exegetical tradition was, however, profound. He should be considered oneof the major intellectual figures of medieval Islam, and his output is worthy of a more sustainedanalysis than has been the case so far.

WALID A. SALEH

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

I should like to acknowledge the financial assistance of the American Research Center in Egypt

(ARCE), whose funding for my research in Cairo was essential for this study. The help Ireceived from ARCE's dedicated staff was instrumental in obtaining materials from Dar al-Kutuband al-Azhar University Library. A trip to Istanbul and Egypt to collect copies of the manuscriptswas financed by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada(SSHRC). I am also indebted to Professor 'Abd al-Rahim Abu Husayn, chair of the HistoryDepartment at the American University of Beirut, and Professor Ibrahim Kalin at Holy CrossCollege, for helping to obtain material from Istanbul. Special thanks go to Shihab Ahmed ofHarvard University for taking the trouble to check some manuscripts on site in Istanbul, and whoinformed me of a copy of al-Basit that I did not know about. Finally I would like to thank theanonymous reader, who offered very helpful suggestions.

1. See Abu 'Abd Allah al-Yafi'i, Mir'at al-jinan (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-A'lami li-al-Matbu'at, 1974),

2:208; see also Jawdat al-Mahdi, al-Wahidi wa-manhajuh fi al-tafsir (Cairo: Wizarat al-Thaqafah,1977), 403 for more references on this anecdote.

2. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ihya' 'ulum al-din (Cairo: Matba'at al-Babi al-Halabi, 1957), 1: 40,advises the student who wants to know about the Qur'an to read al-Wahidi's al-Wajiz and al-Wasit. See al-Wahidi, al-Wajiz, ed. Safwan Dawudi (Damascus: Dar al-Qalam, 1995), 1: 45.

3. Al-Yafi'i, Mir'at, 3: 96; Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi, Siyar a'lam al-nubala', ed. Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut(Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Risalah, 1984), 18: 340.

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4. See Yaqut al-Hamawi, Mu'jam al-udaba', ed. 'A. F. al-Rifa'i (Cairo: Dar al-Ma'mun, 1938), 12:260.

5. In the last twenty years an attempt to edit the massive literature of tafsir has been launched in

graduate programs in universities in Saudi Arabia and Egypt; many of the editions appearingthese days were originally submitted as dissertations.

6. This process was begun by John Wansbrough in his Quranic Studies: Sources and Methodsof Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977).

7. Some modern Muslim scholars have offered cursory surveys of the genre, relying on bothprinted texts and manuscripts; unfortunately, these studies are neither comprehensive nor dothey adopt a critical-historical approach. The standard survey of tafsir works in Arabic isMuhammad Husayn al-Dhahabi, al-Tafsir wa-al-mufassirun, 3 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah,1961). Jamal J. Elias has also studied the unpublished Qur'an commentary of al-Simnani (d.736/1336); see his The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of 'Ala' ad-Dawla as-

Simnani (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1995). See also G. Bowering, "The Qur'anCommentary of Al-Sulami," in Islamic Studies Presented to Charles Adams, ed. W. E. Hallaqand D. B. Little (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 41-65.

8. See my The Formation of the Classical Tafsir Tradition: The Qur'an Commentary of al-Tha'labi (d. 427/1035) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 205-21.

9. The first to draw attention to al-Razi's dependency on al-Wahidi was Jawdat al-Mahdi in hispioneering work, al-Wahidi wa-manhajuh fi al-tafsir. See also Jacques Jomier, "Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (m. 606H./1210) et les commentaires du Coran plus anciens," MIDEO 15 (1982): 158-59,who mentions al-Wahidi as a source for al-Razi.

10. See al-Wajiz, 1: 56; Dawudi, Tabaqat al-mufassirin, 1:100.

11. The first publication of al-Wajiz was on the margins of Muhammad al-Nawawi's Marah Labid(al-Tafsir al-munir li-ma'alim al-tanzil al-mufassir 'an wujuh mahasin al-ta'wil al-musamma tibqanli-ma'nah Marah Labid li-kashf ma'na Qur'an majid), 2 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-'Arabiyah,1305/1887-88). The second is the critical edition by Safwan Dawudi (n. 2 above). Claude Gilliotmentions a 1955 edition by Mustafa al-Saqqa in his entry on al-Wahidi ("Textes arabes anciensedites en Egypte," MIDEO 24 (2000): 187). I have failed to find any trace of such an edition. Theconfusion may come from the fact that al-Saqqa himself wrote a Qur'an commentary called al-Wajiz. Gilliot's source for his information is Muhammad 'Isa Salihiyah, al-Mu'jam al-shamil li-al-turath al-'arabi al-matbu' (Cairo: Ma'had al-Makhtutat al-'Arabiyah, 1995), 5: 318.

12. Al-Wasit, ed. 'Adil 'Abd al-Mawjud et al., 4 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyah, 1994).There is also an incomplete edition by Muhammad al-Zafiti (or al-Zufayti), 2 vols. (Cairo: 1986-1995), which only covers Suras 1-4.

13. See Ibn al-Qifti, Inbah al-ruwat 'ala anbah al-nuhat, ed. Muhammad Abu al-Fadl Ibrahim(Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyah, 1952), 2: 223. Gilliot repeats the same information ("Textesarabes," 187).

14. This popular work has been published repeatedly. The standard critical edition is by al-

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Sayyid Ahmad Saqr (Asbab nuzul al-Qur'an, Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Jadid, 1969); this is now rare.

15. Here I follow the assessment of Ihsan 'Abbas in his Ta'rikh al-naqd al-adabi 'inda al-'Arab:naqd al-shi'r min al-qarn al-thani hatta al-qarn al-thamin al-hijri (Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1981),esp. 361-97.

16. See Formation, 1-22.

17. See Abu 'Abd Allah al-Zarkashi, al-Burhan fi 'ulum al-Qur'an, ed. Muhammad Abu al-FadlIbrahim (Beirut: Dar al-Ma'rifah, 1972), 1: 13.

18. See Formation, 295-321.

19. For example, al-Wahidi states, regarding the irrelevance of religious sentiments to thephilological reading of a line of verse, that "opinions and doctrinal beliefs do not diminish theexcellence of poetry" (Mutanabii Carmina cum commentario Wahidii [Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi], ed. F. Dieterici, Berlin: 1861), 331.

20. On the origins and rise of the Arabic philological tradition see C. H. M. Versteegh, ArabicGrammar and Quranic Exegesis in Early Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1993).

21. See Formation, 130-40.

22. For a theologian contemporary with al-Wahidi, Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni, see TilmanNagel, Die Festung des Glaubens: Triumph und Scheitern des islamischen Rationalismus im11. Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988).

23. Asbab, introduction, 5-38.

24. Al-Wajiz, 11-67.

25. K. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur (GAL) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1943), 1:411-12, Supp. 1: 730-31.

26. Gilliot, "Texte arabes," 183-87.

27. Asma Afsaruddin, "Constructing Narratives of Monition and Guile: The Politics ofInterpretation," Arabica 48 (2001): 329-31.

28. 'Ali b. al-Hasan al-Bakharzi, Dumyat al-qasr wa-'usrat ahl al-'asr, ed. Muhammad al-Tunji(Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1971-75), 2: 1017-20.

29. The abridged version is available in 'Abd al-Ghafir al-Farisi, al-Muntakhab min al-Siyaq, ed.Muhammad 'Abd al-'Aziz (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyah, 1989), 387. For the longer (andoriginal) version see Yaqut, Mu'jam al-udaba', 12: 258-60.

30. I have used the Nuruosmaniye manuscript of al-Basit (tafsir 236, ff 1-7), as the basis for thisstudy; I have also consulted the Dar al-Kutub manuscript (tafsir 53: 1), and the al-Azharmanuscript (Riwaq al-Magharibah 303: 1 ff 1-4).

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31. Yaqut, Mu'jam al-udaba', 12: 257-70; for al-Wahidi's autobiography see 262-70. Yaqut'sversion is not a complete quotation of al-Basit's long introduction.

32. Three copies of the last volume of al-Basit have so far been located; all preserve theauthor's original colophon. The style of the colophon is highly literary, which ensured that it wascopied by the scribes. This colophon should be viewed as a continuation of the introduction,

since it elaborates on how al-Wahidi composed the work; any study of al-Basit must take thiscolophon into consideration.

33. It was Dawudi who drew my attention to the catalogue of the collection in al-Mawsil in hisintroduction to al-Wajiz (1: 35). See also Fihris makhtutat Maktabat al-Awqaf al-'Ammah fi al-Mawsil (Baghdad: Wizarat al-Awqaf, 1982), 1: 124. The whole of the colophon was transcribedby Hajji Khalifah (Kashf al-zunun, Istanbul: Wikalat al-Ma'arif, 1941, 1: 811). Dieterici's editionlacks the colophon. I have meanwhile received a photocopy of the last folio of Chester Beatty

Ar. 3278 (a copy of al-Wahidi's Sharh) which does contain the colophon (fol. 263). We thushave at least one manuscript with the original colophon. I am grateful to the Chester BeattyLibrary for sending me the photocopy on short notice.

34. See al-Wasit, 4: 576. The manuscript containing this colophon is housed at the Dar al-Kutubal-Misriyah (for a description see ibid., 1: 38). The colophon's veracity is supported by the Berlinmanuscript (Spr. 415), which reports the same date, which appears not in a colophon but on thetitle page (fol. 1) as a paraphrase of the colophon. Spr. 415 is perhaps the most important of al-Wasit's preserved manuscripts. For a description see W. Ahlwardt, Verzeichniss der arabischenHandschriften der koniglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin: A. W. Schade, 1887), 1: 298-99. I amgrateful to the authorities at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin for allowing me to inspect this volume.

35. On this scholar see al-Farisi, al-Muntakhab, 186; see also al-Dhahabi, Siyar, 17: 389. For anexhaustive list of al-Wahidi's teachers (shuyukh) see Dawudi's introduction to al-Wajiz, 13-18.

36. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 6a.

37. Al-Basit, al-Azhar, Riwaq al-Magharibah 303/5, fol. 209b.

38. Sellheim (like Ahlwardt before him), in his entry on al-Wahidi in [EI.sup.2], states that al-Wahidi began al-Wajiz in 409/1018. This is impossible. Ahlwardt deduced this information fromthe dating of an isnad by al-Wahidi at the beginning of al-Wajiz (see 86); that al-Wahidi wrotedown a prophetic tradition in 409/1018 does not mean that he was writing his book at that time.Moreover, he would have been around 16, which means that he would have begun al-Basit atan even earlier age.

39. I have used my own edition of this introduction (see n. 30).

40. See Mutanabbii Carmina, 825, for an example.

41. Ibn al-Qifti, Inbah, 2: 223-25.

42. For detailed references on al-Quhunduzi see al-Mahdi, al-Wahidi, 67; al-Wajiz, 13.

43. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 5b.

44. Al-Mahdi, al-Wahidi, 67.

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45. On al-Wahidi's Qur'an teachers see ibid., 67-68.

46. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 6a.

47. For the encyclopedic approach see Formation, 14-23.

48. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 2b.

49. Ibid., fol. 4b-5a. See my forthcoming edition and translation of the introduction to al-Basit formore details on al-Wahidi's views on tafsir as presented in this commentary.

50. On al-Tha'labi's sources see Formation, 67-76.

51. Yaqut, Mu'jam al-udaba', 12: 260.

52. Al-Dhahabi, Siyar, 18: 342. The same story is told by al-Subki, if slightly differently; there it is

clear that al-Wahidi's statement was made in an oral communication, a public lecture of somesort (al-Subki, Tabaqat al-Shafi'iyah al-kubra, ed. 'Abd al-Fattah al-Hilw, Cairo: Matba'at al-Babial-Halabi, 1966, 5: 241).

53. Saqr, for example, wonders if there is any other position to take vis-a-vis al-Sulami'smystical "nonsense." He enlists the support of Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597/1201), who in his famousTalbis iblis also attacks al-Sulami (see Saqr's introduction to Asbab, 6-7).

54. "He was the master of his age in grammar and exegesis; he gained felicity in his writings, tothe excellence of which all agreed, and which teachers cited in their lessons." Ibn Khallikan,Wafayat al-a'yan wa-anba' abna' al-zaman, ed. Ihsan 'Abbas (Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafah, 1978), 3:303. Ibn al-Qifti (Inbah, 2: 223) states that "people sought him out for his knowledge."

55. See al-Wajiz, 1: 39-41.

56. Ahlwardt, Verzeichniss, 1: 298-301.

57. See, e.g., Hajji Khalifah (Katib Celebi), Kashf al-zunun, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaasi,1941-1956, repr. 1971), 1: 629: "the one that contains the sum total of meanings [al-hawi li-jami'al-ma'ani] titled al-Basit, al-Wasit and al-Wajiz, by-al-Wahidi."

58. An inspection of a manuscript with the same title from Dar al-Kutub in Cairo (Taymur Tafsir117) showed that it is a volume of al-Wasit, which is written on the title page (fol. 3a). Icompared fol. 3b of Taymur 117, which comments on Qur'an 4:94, with its counterpart in the

printed edition (al-Wasit, 2: 101-2); they correspond exactly. Brockelmann (GAL, S I: 731) citesal-Hawi li-jami' al-ma'ani as an independent title.

59. Brockelmann, GAL, SI: 731. See, for example, the title page of Chester Beatty ms. 3731,where the title for al-Basit is given as Ma'ani al-tafsir al-musamma bi-al-Basit.

60. Dar al-Kutub. Majami' Mustafa 220, fol. 213a-b. See also Fahrasat al-kutub al-'Arabiyah al-mahfuzah bi-al-Kutubkhanah al-Khidaywiyah al-Misriyah (Cairo: 1308/1890-91), 7/2: 693, andsee also 707.

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61. The anonymous author of this epistle took issue with al-Wahidi's statement that "among thenobilities and glories of this science is that it does not allow argument by reason, opinion, orcontemplation, without giving heed to those who bear witness to revelation through narrationand transmission." See al-Wahidi's introduction to al-Wasit, 1: 47.

62. Al-Mahdi, al-Wahidi, 95 (in his reference to the ms. number he dropped "Mustafa").

63. See Dawudi's introduction to al-Wajiz, 1: 37-38. Sellheim offered his refutation in "Eineunbeachtet gebliebene Sprichwortersammlung," Oriens 31 (1988): 91.

64. See R. Sesen, Nawadir al-makhtutatfi maktabat Turkiya, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Jadidah, 1975), 3: 75.

65. See Dawudi's introduction to al-Wajiz, 1: 33-34.

66. The earliest and most comprehensive list of al-Wahidi's works was compiled by his studental-Farisi and is preserved by Yaqut. Ten works are given there: (1) al-Wajiz, (2) al-Wasit, (3) al-

Basit (all Qur'an commentaries, we are told), (4) Asbab al-nuzul, (5) al-Da'awat wa-al-mahsul,(6) al-Maghazi, (7) Sharh al-Mutanabbi, (8) al-Ighrab fi al-i'rab wa-al-nahw, (9) Tafsir al-nabi,(10) Nafy al-tahrif 'an al-Qur'an al-sharif (Mu'jam al-udaba', 12: 259). Ibn Qadi Shuhbah givesthe title of number 9 as Tafsir asma' al-nabi, Tabaqat al-Shafi'iyay, ed. 'Ali 'Umar (Cairo:Maktabat al-Thaqafah al-Diniyah, 1990), 1: 239, as does Ibn Khallikan (Wafayat, 3: 303). Sincethe earliest list does not group number 9 with the three commentaries I am inclined to take thetitle as given by Ibn Qadi Shuhbah as the most likely.

67. The paragraph states: "Before (writing) this book--with God's aid and help--I had compiledthree compendia [majmu'at] on this science [exegesis]: the meanings of tafsir [ma'ani al-tafsir],inherited materials [musnad al-tafsir], and paraphrastic materials [mukhtasar al-tafsir]. Earlier Ihad been asked to compose a medium-sized [wasit] commentary, smaller than al-Basit (which

is an extensive discourse) but more detailed than al-Wajiz, whose discourse is extremely brief."Al-Wasit, 1: 50; emended according to al-Zafiti's edition, 1: 6 (text).

68. Ahlwardt, Verzeichniss, 1: 299, a mistake copied by Sellheim. Editors in the Arab world takethe categorization as referring to actual titles of exegetical works, and therefore claim that al-Wahidi wrote three works with the titles "Ma'ani al-tafsir," "Musnad al-tafsir," and "Mukhtasar al-tafsir." The first to introduce this confusion was Saqr, in his introduction to Asbab, 18. Al-Mahdialso understood these terms as titles; see al-Wahidi, 92.

69. Those who insist on reading this paragraph as al-Wahidi's reference to published worksmust explain why none of these works has survived, why no medieval author mentioned any ofthem, and why they are not part of the book list his student al-Farisi furnished. There is no shred

of evidence for the existence of any other commentary besides the three that we have.

70. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, f. 7b.

71. Ibn Qadi Shuhbah, Tabaqat al-Shafi'iyah, 1: 239. Brockelmann (GAS, 1: 412) states that thework was in 17 volumes; the only possible source of this information is the wrongly attributedmanuscript in Caetani's collection (Caet. Ms. 78b), which is not an al-Basit volume as thecatalogue claims. The cataloguer was misguided by the title given for this manuscript, which is

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not correct, nor is it the original title of the volume. On inspecting the manuscript it became clearthat it belongs to a later work, as the author quotes extensively from al-Zamakhshari (d.538/1144). The colophon of this manuscript (which neither mentions that it is by al-Wahidi norgives the title) states that the next volume is the seventeenth and last. Brockelmann inspectedthe manuscript and took the attribution at face value. For a brief description of the manuscript,see G. Gabrieli, La Fondazione Caetani per gli studi Musulmani (Rome: Accadmia dei Lincei,

1926), 38, no. 78b.

72. Two are housed in Yemen (Sanaa manuscripts, Maktabat al-Jami' al-Kabir, tafsir nos. 51,54), while the third is in Rome (Caet. ms. 78a).

73. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 7b line 11.

74. Al-Mahdi quotes the introduction to al-Basit in al-Wahidi, 70-72, 76, 209-10, 252-54.

75. Al-Wahidi refers the reader to a "lengthy story" about the people mentioned in Sura 85 in his"musnad al-tafsir" (al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 240, f. 457b). This story, related on theauthority of Suhayb, is recorded in al-Wasit (4: 459-60). This shows that al-Wahidi considered

al-Wasit to be the commentary concerned with musnad material.

76. Al-Hadrami, 'Umdat al-qawi wa-al-da'if lima waqa'a fi Wasit al-Wahidi min al-tabdil wa-al-tahrif, Cairo, Dar al-Kutub, tafsir 159. For details on al-Hadrami and his work, see al-Mahdi, al-Wahidi, 88-89, where he corrects Brockelmann's mischaracterization of this work. See also al-Zafiti's

introduction to al-Wasit, 1: 45.

77. Mahdi Jasim and Nuhad Salih, "Tafsir al-Wasit bayn al-Wajiz wa-al-Basit ... al-Muqaddimahwa-al-fatihah," al-Mawrid 17: 4 (1988), 292-30.

78. Al-Wajiz, 1: 87.

79. See n. 2. I am discounting the Qur'an commentary of Ibn 'Abbas since it did not comment onall of the Qur'an. See Andrew Rippin, "Tafsir Ibn 'Abbas and Criteria for Dating Early tafsirTexts," JSAI 29 (1994): 38-83.

80. Al-Wajiz, 1: 87.

81. The conservative hermeneutics of this work foreshadows Ibn Taymiyah's polemicalmanifesto Muqaddimah fi usul al-tafsir. For an assessment of Ibn Taymiyah's work, seeFormation, 215-27.

82. Asbab, ed. Saqr (see n. 15). A recent reprinting of this work was issued by Kamal Zaghlul(Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyah, 2001). To his credit, Zaghlul is explicit about using Saqr'sedition as the basis of his reprint.

83. Asbab, ed. Saqr, 5-6.

84. Ibid., 4.

85. See Andrew Rippin, "The Exegetical Genre asbab al-nuzul: A Bibliographical and

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Terminological Survey," BSOAS 48 (1985): 4-5, 15.

86. Hajji Khalifah, Kashf al-zunun, 1: 809.

87. Carmina Muntanabbi, 2-4.

88. Uri Rubin has discussed this verse, and its interpretations, at length; see Rubin, The Eye ofthe Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims (Princeton: Darwin Press,1995), 90-99.

89. See Formation, 142-49.

90. Al-Zamakhshari, al-Kashshaf (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1972), 4: 265.

91. Al-Basit, Riwaq al-Magharibah 303/5, f. 192a.

92. See Formation, 233-35.

93. Al-Wait, 4: 511.

94. Al-Wajiz 2: 1211.

COPYRIGHT 2006 American Oriental Society

THE FATHER OF ISLAMIC RADICALISM?

Toynbee Hall in East London was the venue as Professor Yahya Michot from the

Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies launched his much awaited and debated book on

Ibn Taymiyyah. by Emdad Rahman

For leading enlightened Western academics, Muslim modernists and 'progressives',

Ibn Taymiyyah is considered the godfather of uncompromising violent Jihadism. For

the modern day 'Jihadi', the life and works of Taqi-Uddin Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah (d.

728/1328) are regarded as sources of inspiration. Perhaps one of the most

misunderstood and misquoted scholars, he and those claiming to follow his school of

understanding today, have been accused of anthropomorphism, enmity towards people

of spirituality or Tasawwuf, and creedal deviation from mainstream Sunni Islam.

Ironically, Ibn Taymiyyah lived at a time very similar to ours, where Muslims in

certain regions lived under non-Muslim rule, i.e. lands occupied by the Mongols and

the Crusaders, and with various Muslim factions vying with one another to gain

credibility with the Establishment.

In his book 'Ibn Taymiyya: Muslims under non-Muslim Rule", Professor Michot

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overturns this conventional and somewhat simplistic picture of Shaykh Ibn

Taymiyyah.

During the book launch he examined the life, work and jihad, and present close and

careful translations of the four 'Mardin fatwas' issued by Ibn Taymiyyah on howMuslims should respond when they come under non-Muslim rule. Should they fight

or quit such rule? If they have to adjust to it, what form should this take and to what

extent should this be? The inconsistent and oft unfair accusations of deviancy

levelled against Ibn Taymiyyah were also addressed in a scholarly manner. I

developed an interest in researching Ibn Taymiyyah through my research of Ibn,

whereby I discovered many similarities between these two great personalities he

said.

He added Ibn Taymiyyah did not just split the world up into two parts; namely

Darul Islam and Darul Kufr/Harb, but recognised a third type, and as in the case of

Mardin.

He further addressed the audience and elucidated the reasons why Ibn Taymiyyahs

words are often taken out of context and used the assassination of Sadat and the

Fatwa against Mongol invaders as examples.

Ibn Taymiyyah was more open minded and as a progressive and broad thinker than

he is given credit for. Professor michot exhorted the audience and those who study

the works of Ibn Taymiyyah to broaden their readings rather than focussing onselected chapters.

The book will be of huge benefit to a wide range of people, including those who

adopt the Salafi methodology, those who subscribe to the Ash'ari school of theology,

Muslims who consider themselves to be part of other 'groups' or none, secularists,

Neocons, apologists, people involved in policy-making bodies and think tanks, and all

people who would just like to understand what the fuss is all about. The Foreword by

James Piscatori draws out the political implications of this stunning correction of the

image of Ibn Taymiyya. It means that Islamic political activism need not beunintelligible, and response to it therefore needs to be more intelligent and nuanced

than it usually is.

Copies of the book were also made available for sale and signing during the free

event.

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* Professor Yahya M. Michot is one of the world's leading experts on Ibn Taymiyyah.

He was director of the Centre for Arabic Philosophy at University of Louvain in

Belgium where he has delivered courses in Arabic, History of Arabic Philo