Afterword: The Academic Study of the Qurʾān—Achievements, Challenges, and Prospects

Abstract

Qur’anic Studies is a broad field that includes many categories and subtopics, including grammar, lexicon, rhetoric, theology, law, textual history, textual variants, the history of interpretation, and many others, any one of which is, or has the potential to be, large and complex. The investigation of these fields is not new but goes back to the early Islamic centuries. As the Islamic societies matured and spread, so did the scholarly genres that grew up around the Qur’an, including tafsir, qisas al-anbiya’ , grammatical treatises, rhetorical manuals, and so on. Such works were penned in all corners of the Islamic world, primarily in Arabic, but also in other Islamic languages.