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Review of - Walid Saleh, The Formation of the Classical

Tafsīr Tradition: The Qur'ān Commentary of al-Tha'labī
: The Formation of the Classic....

Article in Journal of Qur anic Studies · April 2006

DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2006.8.1.119

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 Book Reviews

The Formation of the Classical Tafsır Tradition: The Qur√�n Commentary of

al-Thafilabı (d. 427/1035). By Walid Saleh. Texts and Studies on the Qur√�n, 1.
Leiden: Brill, 2004. Pp. 280. €90.00.

When we ask how Muslims have been able to derive meaning from the Qur’an, or
rather, how the text of the Qur’an has produced meaning for them century after
century, we are led to the conclusion that the search for the true meaning of the
Qur’an resulted in a multiplication of meanings. Walid Saleh quotes Mu˛ammad ibn
A˛mad al-Qur†ubı (d. 671/1272) as saying that Q. 31:27, the aya that mentions the
inexhaustibility of God’s words, refers to ‘the multitude of meanings of the Words of
God, meanings which are endless’ (p. 1, n. 2). This phrase could summarise the
endeavour of successive generations of scholars who were engaged in Qur’anic
commentary in order to discern the meanings of the kalim�t All�h and explain them
to their respective contemporaries. This ‘multitude of meanings’ might thus be the
basis for a pluralistic understanding of the exegetical tradition, which does not tell us
as much about the Qur’an as it does about the exegetes themselves, and their
societies and cultures. Saleh touches on exactly this point when he says that in
Qur’anic commentary ‘one finds reflected the concerns of every generation of
Muslim intellectuals’ (p. 2), rejecting the view that this discipline was a ‘detached,
ahistorical enterprise with no connection to the cultural milieu in which it was
produced’ (p. 11).

It is important to note, however, that the exercise of commenting on, interpreting,

expanding and applying the words and message of the Qur’an was not the exclusive
prerogative of the mufassirün, or of the genre we call tafsır. Numerous authors in
different disciplines used, quoted, mentioned and made reference to Qur’anic
concepts, words and ayas in their works. Each of these uses may or may not have
been accompanied by an explicit form of exegesis, but the mere exercise of inserting
textual references to scripture – let alone commenting on them – can certainly be
seen as carrying an important exegetical character. Having said that, the sheer size
and amount of formal Qur’anic commentaries (the collection of the British Library,
for example, contains almost four hundred taf�sır) makes it a discipline which must
receive more and more attention. The arrival of Walid Saleh’s book on the scene
confirms the increasing importance of studies related specifically to Qur’anic
commentary as found in the formal tafsır genre. For anyone acquainted with the
history of Qur’anic commentary, this book will be interesting and informative in that
it opens new directions of enquiry and revisits and revises certain ideas that have
been taken for granted in the field, providing new categories for a better
understanding of exegetical literature.
120 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

Even though we are far from achieving a global understanding of the totality of
complexities that formed the genre of tafsır, it is high time that scholars’ work is
geared towards a history of Qur’anic commentary, which will entail still more basic
philological work (as basic as the editing and cataloguing of manuscripts), the
redirection of efforts focusing on all periods of Qur’an commentary and the
reassessment of theories proposed in the last hundred years (not since Golziher’s
1920 Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslesung have we witnessed a monograph
that attempts to offer a comprehensive depiction of tafsır in its chronological,
typological, methodological and doctrinal coordinates).

Walid Saleh’s book is a useful contribution to this end. It is a relatively bold

enterprise – given that the Kashf has not been properly or critically edited – yet the
author has consulted manuscripts extensively and thus has bridged the divide
between philological work and analytical scholarship. The Formation of the
Classical Tafsır Tradition covers two important aspects. One the one hand it
examines and analyses Abü Is˛�q A˛mad al-Thafilabı’s al-Kashf wa’l-bay�n fian
tafsır al-Qur√�n. On the other, it provides not only the historical and intellectual
context in which al-Thafilabı’s work came into being, but also how it related to what
Saleh calls the ‘genealogical tradition’ of Qur’anic commentary.

The main previously established conception that Saleh challenges is the prevalent
view of the tafsır of Mu˛ammad ibn Jarır al-‡abarı (d. 310/923) as somehow the
highest point in the ‘tradition’. In a sense the book is a vindication of al-Thafilabı’s
influential position in the history of tafsır as having ‘transformed and reshaped’ the
discipline in such a way that his work became ‘far more influential’ than that of
al-‡abarı (p. 5), and it seems clear that Saleh’s aim is to situate al-Thafilabı closer to
the centre stage of tafsır studies. Al-Thafilabı, Saleh claims, has not only resumed
al-‡abarı’s task but has also ‘redone’ it (p. 8). It is a constant of Islamic studies (and
historical studies in general) that particular authors are hailed as makers of traditions
or ostracised as rarities and exceptions (or vice-versa). In this case, Saleh’s effort to
downplay the influence of al-‡abarı and to highlight that of al-Thafilabı must be
received with caution, unless one equates influence in a tradition with intellectual
excellence. Saleh makes another important general point: that the two centuries
between al-‡abarı and Ma˛müd ibn fiUmar al-Zamakhsharı (d. 538/1144) witnessed
the ‘rise to dominance’ of what he calls ‘the Nishapuri school of Qur’an
commentary’ which comprises al-Thafilabı himself, his master al-˘asan ibn
Mu˛ammad ibn ˘abıb (d. 406/1015), and his student, and in a sense intellectual heir,
fiAlı ibn A˛mad al-W�˛idı (d. 486/1076). The Nishapuri school was ‘extremely
influential’ in the following centuries (p. 4) and, as Saleh ventures to say, ‘may be
the best in the field’ (p. 49). (The author states his intention of writing on al-W�˛idı
(p. 28, n. 14) which will undoubtedly make a valuable contribution to our knowledge
of the ‘Nishapuri school’.)
 Book Reviews 121

The Formation of the Classical Tafsır Tradition is well written and clearly
organised. It contains a useful summary of chapters (pp. 5–14), and its solidity is
reinforced by the addition of three appendices (respectively, on the manuscripts of
the Kashf, on al-Thafilabı’s teachers, and on those sources used in the Kashf which
are no longer extant). One misses, however, a list of the sources which have reached
us, although these are discussed in the text.

The analysis carried out by Saleh is doublefold. On the one hand, there is an
intertextual approach (what Saleh calls the ‘macro-level’) to the contents of the
Kashf vis-à-vis the works of other commentators, with al-‡abarı, al-Zamakhsharı
and al-Qur†ubı among others. There is also an intratextual reading (the ‘micro-level’)
of the Kashf which focuses on the relationships that are at play between al-Thafilabı’s
hermeneutical theory present in his introduction and his exegetical practice. The
chapters devoted to this (Chapters Five and Six) occupy 40 per cent of the book.

Saleh proposes a description of tafsır as an ‘omnipresent’, ‘genealogical tradition’

which ‘at every moment ... was in its totality available to the exegete’ and in which
each commentary added its ‘voice to the pool of interpretations inherited’ (p. 14): yet
he does not fully explore or assume the implications of defining tafsır as ‘a
tradition’. In anthropological terms, we would not speak, as does Saleh, of traditions
from which ‘it was impossible to oust any major component ... after it had gained
entry’ (p. 15). Instead, we should look at ‘traditions’ as constructs, having in mind,
for example, the category of social heritage and, most importantly, the concept of the
invented tradition.1 This reflects how little prepared scholars in Islamic Studies are to
use the conceptual and terminological tools offered by the intellectual contributions
of the social sciences.

Walid Saleh is right in dismissing the categories (originally mainly polemical, and
replicated by modern scholarship) of tafsır bi’l-ma√thür and tafsır bi’l-ra√y as an
‘ideological division’ which has ‘no basis in the genre itself’. As he puts it, ‘most of
the tafsır bi’l-ma√thür is in reality a tafsır bi’l-ra√y’ (p. 16). However, despite his
commendable attempt at creating new categories for describing the different types of
tafsır (‘encyclopedic’ and ‘madrasa-style’,2 to which he also adds ‘scholastic
glosses’), Saleh makes a rather vague use of the term ‘Sunnism’. ‘Sunnism’ is taken
to be ‘a large umbrella under which many ideas and doctrines coexisted’ (p. 18),
although it is left largely undefined in depth. Futhermore, although Saleh makes a
caveat regarding the use of the terms ‘Sunnism’, ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ (p. 28), he
uses them often in a similarly indeterminate, impersonal vein: ‘all meanings
sanctioned by Sunnism were admissible and they were sanctioned by Sunnism
because Sunnism set loose boundaries for acceptance’ (p. 20). He adds that ‘the state
supported and fostered orthodox Islam’ (p. 27). This implies that there is such a
thing as ‘orthodox Islam’ which then was supported by the state, when the case was
the opposite: it is precisely the support of an establishment that gives the defenders
122 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

of a doctrine the self-arrogated title of ‘orthodox’. Also, when he says that

‘orthodoxy was being shaped – not adhered to’ (p. 48) at the time of al-Thafilabı, he
employs the term ‘orthodoxy’ as synonymous to ‘Sunnism’, while the reality was
that there were competing ideologies claiming to carry the flag of the truth, or
competing orthodoxies.

Saleh argues that it was due to the ‘encyclopedic nature’ of al-Thafilabı’s

commentary, including his inclusion of Shıfiı materials, that Ibn Taymiyya
(d. 728/1328) condemned him as unreliable. However, Saleh’s statements that Ibn
Taymiyya ‘played a major role in the consolidation of a new kind of hermeneutics’
and that he dealt a ‘blow’ ‘both to al-Thafilabı and to the encyclopedic quranic
exegetical tradition, that eventually allows the consolidation of tafsır bi’l-ma√thür
Qur√�n commentaries’ seem to be exaggerated assertions of Ibn Taymiyya’s
influence on later thought, and must be reconsidered in the light of the latest
scholarship, such as the work of Khaled El-Rouayheb.3

In Chapter One, Saleh demonstrates that bibliographical dictionaries are an immense

source for information and provides us with what is probably the most complete
depiction of al-Thafilabı’s life to date through an exhaustive reconstruction based on
numerous works. His main sources are al-W�˛idı and the later fiAbd al-Gh�fir
al-F�risı (d. 529/1135). Chapter Two contains a refutation of the claim that
al-Thafilabı was a ∑üfı associate of the circle of Abü’l-Q�sim al-Junayd, entertained
by, among others, Tilman Nagel, and the claim that al-Thafilabı’s work entitled Qatl�
al-Qur√�n (a collection of stories about those who suffered an ecstatic death upon
listening to the recitation of the Qur’an) is a mystical work, as intimated by Beate
Wiesmμller. Saleh rightly points out that it is misleading to assume that ‘extreme
religious piety in medieval Muslim societies was something reserved for ∑üfı
adherents’ (p. 59) and goes on to say that by this work al-Thafilabı attempted to
‘raise the importance of the act of reading the Qur√�n’ and to place the Qur’an ‘at the
center’ of Muslim religious life and practice (p. 63). Chapter Three introduces the
structure of al-Thafilabı’s tafsır and its sources. In the following chapters, Saleh does
something which one hopes becomes a standard practice in scholars of Qur’anic
commentary: he identifies al-Thafilabı’s hermeneutics on the one hand and his
exegesis on the other, or in other words, his theoretical framework and his
interpretative practice, and analyses the relationship between both. In a sense, we are
fortunate that an introduction to the tafsır that puts forward al-Thafilabı’s views quite
explicitly is extant. Studying introductions of exegetical works is always a fruitful
exercise, although in the case of certain commentators, the modern scholar’s labour
of ‘extracting’ and verbalising their hermeneutical stance is complicated and
demands a close engagement with the text of the kind one sees in doctoral
dissertations or monographs, which are dearly needed in the field of tafsır studies.
 Book Reviews 123

Chapter Four is, then, an analysis of al-Thafilabı’s thought and of his own positioning
of his work inside the exegetical literature. Saleh pays special attention to the
‘fourteen aspects or ways (na˛w)’ used by al-Thafilabı as the guiding principles of
his book. These aspects are quite elaborate and innovative but Saleh has discovered a
resemblance between al-Thafilabı’s terminology and the literature of the Karr�miyya
that indicates a possible influence of the latter on al-Thafilabı’s approach. The author
does not delve deeply into this link and the Karr�mı influence on the Nısh�pürı
author will need further research. Al-Thafilabı’s hermeneutical theory is best
summarised by his definition of tafsır and ta√wıl and his support of the view that
scholars are the r�sikhün fı’l-fiilm (‘those who are firmly rooted in knowledge’, of Q.
3:7) who can and do know the interpretation of ‘every aspect of the Qur√�n, even the
ambiguous parts’ (p. 94). An important point for the history of Qur’anic exegesis
mentioned by al-Thafilabı and emphasised by Walid Saleh is that all exegetes,
including the Sunnıs, indulged in interpretation, ‘despite protestations to the
contrary’. But al-Thafilabı went further than that. While taking into account
everything that had been said regarding the interpretation of the Qur’an by previous
generations, he brought into tafsır ‘grammar, poetry, history, dogma, law, and
philology’ in an integrated and comprehensive manner which, as Saleh claims,
helped create a ‘new tradition of encyclopedic commentaries’ which intended to
make of tafsır ‘a main repository for Islamic moral education’ (p. 96). What allowed
him to perform such a task was his definition of ta√wıl as ‘ßarf al-�ya il� mafin�
yafitamiluhu muw�fiq li-m� qablah� wa-m� bafidah�’ (‘the rendering of the meaning
of the verse into a different meaning that it might entertain which is consistent with
what comes before and after it’, according to Saleh’s translation, p. 92, p. 97). Saleh
explains that although al-Thafilabı’s theory implied the acceptance of a ‘polyvalency’
of meanings, his acceptance of interpretations was ultimately limited by doctrinal not
philological considerations – i.e. his ‘Sunnı creed’ (p. 98). Indeed this was one of the
greatest limitations of classical Islamic thought, that despite the will of many
thinkers to be comprehensive and all-embracing, doctrinal differences led to the
exclusion of ample bodies of intellectual material. Al-Thafilabı thus rejects and
ignores Mufitazilı interpretations. Only in contemporary scholarship are we able to
look at the whole spectrum of interpretations, examine and value them side by side
with a non-normative approach.

In Chapter Five, Saleh rightly points out that John Wansbrough’s application of
terms from the Hebrew scriptural and midrashic tradition to the study of tafsır has
‘ceased to add to our understanding of this tradition’. Instead, he proposes the use of
an alternative terminology, and only time will tell if this becomes accepted in tafsır
studies, as some of these terms are borrowed and others developed by Saleh, such as
the ‘Nishapuri school’ of tafsır (p. 4, et passim), the ‘salvific interpretation’ of the
Qur’an (p. 108), the ‘k-verses’ (i.e. those that address Mu˛ammad, p. 112), the
‘anthological’ nature of tafsır (p. 140, p. 152), ‘fictive narratives’ (p. 161, i.e.
124 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

interpretations that are ‘narrative in nature and where the narrative has no basis in
the verses being interpreted’), ‘functional (or moral) exegesis’ (p. 167), the
‘dialogical–Qur√�n’ (p. 175), and the dichotomy between ‘encyclopedic’ and
‘madrasa’ commentaries (p. 199), to cite some examples. Chapter Six outlines the
main ‘tendencies’ incorporated by al-Thafilabı in his tafsır – mysticism, narrative,
moral(istic) thought, political/doctrinal polemics, ˘adıth and scholasticism. By
being applied to the explanation of the Qur’an, these disciplines (which were in turn
somehow ‘produced by the culture that the Qur√�n had brought into being’) were
being ‘sanctified’. Saleh is right in asserting the high cultural significance of tafsır
for ‘making the world itself comprehensible’, which was a venture ‘far greater than
“explaining” the Qur√�n’ (p. 151).

Chapter Seven briefly covers the reception history of al-Thafilabı’s Kashf in the
Sunnı exegetical tradition. Saleh concludes that soon after al-Thafilabı exegetes
‘ceased to use the individual pre-‡abarı commentaries directly’, relying instead on
‘encyclopaedic’ commentaries (p. 206). As opposed to the (historically) largely
ignored tafsır of al-‡abarı, he traces the lasting influence of the Kashf, which was a
major source even for al-Zamakhsharı’s al-Kashsh�f fian ˛aq�√iq al-tanzıl and
al-Qur†ubı’s al-J�mifi li-a˛k�m al-Qur√�n. Finally, Saleh analyses the role of
al-Thafilabı’s work in Sunnı-Shıfiı polemics. It is ironic that it was precisely the
comprehensiveness of his approach, and his inclusion of a wide range of materials
(which he accepted as long as long as they were philologically sound) that was
ultimately to undermine al-Thafilabı’s prestige among later Sunnı commentators. The
Kashf contains a certain amount of Shıfiı material, which al-Thafilabı used to
‘neutralise the Shıfiı position’ and ‘inoculate’ the Sunnıs against ‘Shıfiı propaganda’.
Saleh uncovers evidence that 200 years after al-Thafilabı’s death, Shıfiı authors, such
as Ibn al-Bi†rıq (d. 600/1203), fiAlı ibn ‡�wüs (d. 664/1266) and his brother A˛mad
(d. 673/1275), and al-fiAll�ma al-˘illı (d. 726/1235) started to use traditions found in
the Kashf that supported the claims of the Shıfia that fiAlı ibn Abı ‡�lib was referred
to in the Qur’an, and used those traditions in either anti-Sunnı polemical treatises or
in expositions of Shıfiı doctrines. Ibn Taymiyya, with what Saleh calls his ‘radical
hermeneutics’ (p. 217: philology had ‘no role to play’ in exegesis; the Qur’an must
be interpreted ‘by the Qur√�n itself’, by the Prophet’s tradition (Sunna) and by the
interpretations of the early generations), rejected the authority of al-Thafilabı’s tafsır
partly on account of his use of Shıfiı material. Saleh attests to the decay of
al-Thafilabı’s reputation that has occurred since then among Sunnı authors, as seen
in, for example, al-Itq�n fı fiulüm al-Qur√�n of fiAbd al-Ra˛m�n al-Suyü†ı
(d. 911/1505).

In conclusion, the editors of the Brill ‘Texts and Studies of the Qur√�n’ series,
Gerhard Böwering and Jane D. McAuliffe, of which The Formation of the Classical
 Book Reviews 125

Tafsır Tradition is the first volume, are to be commended, as is Walid Saleh’s

thoroughly enjoyable book, which points to a promising career for the author.

OMAR ALÍ-DE-UNZAGA

NOTES
1 Pace Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1983); Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1977).
2 For a mild critique of this classification, see Andrew J. Lane, A Traditional Mufitazilite
Qur√�n Commentary: The Kashsh�f of J�r All�h al-Zamakhsharı (d. 538/1144), Texts and
Studies on the Qur√�n, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 114–16.
3 Khaled El-Rouayheb, ‘From Ibn ˘ajar al-Haytamı (d. 1566) to Khayr al-Dın al-Alüsı (d.
1899): Changing Views of Ibn Taymiyya amongst non-˘anbalı Sunni Scholars’, paper
presented at the conference on ‘Ibn Taymiyyah and His Times’, Princeton, April 8–10, 2005,
forthcoming as an article in the conference proceedings.

Textual Relations in the Qur’an: Relevance, Coherence and Structure. By

Salwa M.S. El-Awa. Routledge Studies in the Qur’an. Routledge: London and New
York, 2006. Pp. 192. £65.00.

This book, originally a PhD thesis submitted to the University of London, presents
itself as a contribution to Qur’anic studies concerned with understanding the sura as
a unity, an approach to the Qur’an which, since the mid 20th century, has moved to
the mainstream of this field of study. The author uses a theory now current in
contemporary linguistics to devise a technique by which to demonstrate, on the basis
of objective criteria, the organic unity of the longer, multiple subject suras of the
Qur’an: as such it merits close sympathetic study.

Textual Relations in the Qur’an comprises an Introduction (pp. 1–25) in which the
author sets out her perceptions of the need for such a work, her modus operandi, the
terminology she uses, and explains why the approach she has chosen is ‘the most
appropriate’ (p. 7); an historical overview of approaches to coherence (mun�saba) in
the sura (Chapter One, pp. 9–25); an account of the linguistic theory to be her
instrument of enquiry (Chapter Two, pp. 26–44); its application to Sürat al-A˛z�b
(Chapter Three, pp. 45–100); and to Sürat al-Qiy�ma (Chapter Four, pp. 101–59),
and a Conclusion (pp. 160–3).

Chapter One has three threads: the ideas of coherence within the sura in the pre-
modern tradition of exegesis, notably in the work of al-R�zı, al-Zarkashı and al-
Biq�fiı; the attitudes to the views of such coherence – or rather the absence of it –

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