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Majāz al-qur'ān : periphrastic exegesis

1970; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 33; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0041977x00103325

1474-0699

J. Wansbrough,

Families in Therapy and Culture

As a normative discipline Qur'anic exegesis shares both principles and terminology with the other Islamic sciences, and as such is not likely to have been articulated before the third/ninth century. Prominent in the fully elaborated system, as for example exhibited in the work of al-Zamakhshari (d. 538/1143), are the complementary principles of qiyās and taqdīr. While the former is commonly understood to represent the hermeneutical instrument called analogy, a typological description of qiyās will distinguish between applications of the principle which depend upon a textual similarity, and those which are derived from a rational or causal relation. Of the first type it may be said that there are as many kinds of analogy as there are means of establishing external (grammatical and lexical) affinity between different scriptural contexts. Underlying the second type of analogy is a unifying principle ( ratio ) independent of textual similarities, both explicit and implicit. In theory, if not always in practice, one may differentiate the two types of qiyās by reference to the incidence in each of what I have called the complementary principle of taqdīr . This term, of which the most common rendering ‘supplementation’ ( Ergänzung ), alluding to only one aspect of the procedure in question, is not quite satisfactory, signifies reconstruction or restoration ( Wiederherstellung: restitutio in integrum ), namely, of a scriptural context or passage. Now, while the elaboration of grammatical qiyās by the so-called ‘Basran school’ was characterized by an almost unlimited application of that principle, two reservations must be made.