Intratextuelle Koranexegese

Abstract

The article »Intratextual Quranic exegesis« by Nour Khalife deals with the method of interpreting the Quran through the Quran (tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi-l-Qurʾān) and discusses it using the example of the extensive and modern Quranic commentary al-Mīzān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān by the Iranian scholar and philosopher Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥusain Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1981). In it, the author examines the extent to which this method is actually applicable with regard to the aforementioned Quranic commentary and has shaped it. To this end, the author takes up essential aspects of intratextual Quranic exegesis, which, in contrast to intertextual Quranic exegesis, has apparently been applied in this form by few Quranic exegetes up to now, in which the author also sees the significance of her research work, and first reflects on important principles of both Sunni and Shiite Quranic interpretation before going into greater detail on the corresponding foundations and rules of the method of tafsīr al-Qurʾān bi-l-Qurʾān. She then uses the Ṭabāṭabāʾī’s commentary on the Quran to study and analyze its structure and method as this commentary has achieved a wide range and special scholarly recognition within the Shiite denomination, while outside Shiite research and scholarship it has been insufficiently treated in comparison. Probably the most important part of her work is carried out by means of a practical example of interpretation, which refers to the 114th sura of the Quran, sūrat an-nās, and by means of which she shows how Ṭabāṭabāʾī proceeds exactly in his intratextual exegesis and which other points of view, such as philosophical, mystical, and sociological, play an equally important role in his interpretation of the Quran.