The Qur'an and its Interpretation

This presentation explores the interplay between sound and meaning in the Qur’an, demonstrating how phonetic patterns contribute to both thematic depth and aesthetic harmony. While Ferdinand de Saussure’s emphasis on linguistic arbitrariness led to the marginalization of sound symbolism in linguistic studies, research by Edward Sapir and contemporary scholars has revived interest in phonetic associations across languages. Building on this foundation, I examine how the Qur’an employs vowel length, rhyme shifts, and consonant contrasts to enhance meaning.

Through case studies from Sūrat al-Muddaththir, Sūrat al-Balad, and Sūrat Maryam, I show how long and short vowels signal abundance and its cessation, while consonant patterns evoke reflection, turbulence, or severity. These phonetic choices not only enhance the Qur’an’s rhetorical and poetic qualities but also reinforce its theological messages. This study highlights the Qur’an’s soundscapes as a sophisticated linguistic device, where meaning and aesthetics function in seamless harmony.

The miḥna sparked extensive discourse on the Qur’an’s ontological nature and God’s Attribute of Speech (kalām Allāh). The Māturīdis and Ashʿarīs distinguished between the pre-eternal kalām nafsī and the temporal kalām lafẓī. In parallel, the uṣūliyyūn debated the Qur’an’s essential composition. The Ahl al-Ḥadīth held that the Qur’an consists of both lafẓ and maʿnā, while the Ḥanafīs, as Omar Qureshi argues, viewed it as maʿnā alone, permitting translations as valid Qur’anic expressions. Shāfiʿī critics equated this with the Muʿtazilī Created Qur’an doctrine. Qureshi suggests that later Ḥanafīs abandoned this view, but I argue that defenses persisted, notably in Badr al-Dīn al-ʿAynī and Mullā Jīwan. The Ḥanafī ontology of the Qur’an aligns with the dominant mutakallimūn position, though its legal application evolved. Mustafa Sabri’s refutation of Qur’anic translations under Atatürk underscores this tension. I will explore these shifts in applied uṣūl and fiqh, and demonstrate the persistence of the original ontology.

In his famed Qur’anic commentary, al-Kashshāf, al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) proposed a new hermeneutic and third way for interpreting the ambiguous verses (mutashābihāt) of Islamic scripture: an imaginative hermeneutic (ṭarīq al-takhyīl). While secondary scholarship has identified this innovative proposal and has attempted to identify precisely what is meant by al-Zamakhsharī’s imaginative hermeneutics, a fuller examination of its reception in the genre of Qur’anic commentary (tafsīr) awaits future study. In this paper, I examine encyclopedic, marginal glosses, as well as madrasa commentaries in the post-classical period to conclude that al-Zamaksharī’s proposal was debated and subsequently re-interpreted to conform with mainstream theological hermeneutics and Arabic rhetoric, ultimately neutralizing its revolutionary potential. 

This paper examines the scriptural hermeneutics of Mollā Muḥammed b. Ḥamza el-Fenārī (d. 834/1431), a pivotal figure in the school of Ibn al-ʿArabī and the Ottoman intellectual tradition. Fenārī was both a jurist and a Sufi metaphysician, producing works in legal theory and Sufi Quranic exegesis. By analyzing Fuṣūl al-Badāʿiʿ and ʿAyn al-Aʿyān, this study argues that there is a subtle crossover between exoteric and esoteric interpretive frameworks in Fenārī's writings. By adhering to classical Ḥanafī legal theory, Fenārī critiques Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa’s alternative understanding of linguistic communication and interpretation, favoring an approach that aligns with Sufi notions of interpretive plurality. This paper aims to contribute to an integrative picture of Fenārī between these traditions within the context of the later periods of Islamic thought.