Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

Abstract

This chapter discusses the life and work of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943–2010). Abu Zayd is part of a group of contemporary intellectuals from the Arabic-speaking part of the Muslim world known as the turāthiyyūn, or “heritage thinkers.” This strand of Islamic thinking developed in the 1970s and 1980s in response to the traumatic outcome of the 1967 war between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries. Abu Zayd advocated the rigorous scholarly investigation of the Quran using innovative methods and techniques of textual criticism and discourse analysis used in literary studies, which was considered anathema by Islamist activists and made him the target of persecution. Abu Zayd and his wife sought asylum abroad, and he has since been recognized internationally as a scholar who has made pioneering contributions to move the study of the Quran and of the wider Islamic intellectual legacy forward.