Studies of the Qur'an and its Interpretation

Recent scholarship has renewed attention to the concept of naẓm al-Qurʾān, the structural and thematic coherence of the Qurʾānic text. While classical Muslim scholars explored coherence through rhetoric, grammar, and the doctrine of iʿjāz, modern discussions have developed along separate trajectories within Islamic and Western Qurʾānic studies. This paper offers a historiographically grounded examination of these developments and explores the methodological intersection between two influential contemporary approaches: the thematic hermeneutics of Amīn Aḥsan Iṣlāḥī and the Semitic-Rhetorical Analysis of Michel Cuypers. Situating both approaches within the longer intellectual history of naẓm, the study asks whether their structural readings represent independent interpretive trajectories or reveal deeper methodological resonance across scholarly traditions. By comparing their treatment of sūrah architecture, thematic unity, and compositional structure, the paper argues that these approaches illuminate complementary dimensions of Qurʾānic coherence and provide a productive framework for comparative inquiry in contemporary Qurʾānic studies.

The history of Qur'anic exegesis (tafsīr) in the modern period has until now lacked discussion on the genre's encounter with print technology. This paper offers a global survey of printed tafsīr works published in the 19th century. To this end, I have compiled a database of 242 tafsīr editions printed in this time period, and sorted and analyzed their publication data by date, title, language, place of publication, publisher, and religious orientation, with the data presented in tables and maps. This survey reveals in quantitative terms the dominance of two primary global tafsīr printing hubs, in Cairo and North India, the rise of vernacular tafsīr works, the decline of the scholastic gloss tradition, and the rise of radical Qur'anic hermeneutics. This paper concludes by drawing parallels between the varied print economies of Reformation-era Europe with the 19th-century Muslim world.

This paper considers exegesis of Qurʾān 11:106–108 by three influential commentators: Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144), and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209). The commentaries of these authors reveal early and sustained debate regarding the possibility of universal salvation. This exegetical debate centered around the idea that God will provide an exception (istithnāʾ) to his own threat of eternal damnation. All three exegetes examined in this paper limit the scope of this exception and hold that unbelievers will be punished in hell forever. At the same time, all three bear witness to the views of other Muslims, who (centuries prior to the well-known universalist writings of IbnʿArabī and Ibn Taymiyya) held that God will exempt all people from eternal punishment and bring everyone to a future state of happiness. The paper thus suggests the diversity of Islamic reflection about the ultimate future of humanity.

This paper examines Qurʾānic recitation (tajwīd) as a mediation of the divine voice, offering new understandings of the sonic sublime in Islam. It foregrounds an original understanding of tajwīd as an act of mediation that brings the lethal divine into realms possible for human sensation. The paper traces the topos of emotional recitation across the Qurʾān, ḥadīth, and Sufi writings, adopting an interdisciplinary approach drawing on ethnomusicology, philology and phenomenology. In doing so, it highlights the sonic properties of recitation, an understudied dimension in this context. It emphasizes the role of eschatological imagery in cultivating the emotional dynamics of tajwīd, highlighting the sensual imagination of recited futures. It further examines how the Qurʾān frames listening to its recitation, identifying a sensual-emotional vocabulary tied to sound. The study argues that this modality centers on khushūʿ, a form of “sonic humility” expressed through practices such as weeping and prostration.