Textual Understanding and the Dialectics of Intent in the Works of Qur'anic Exegetes

Abstract

This article explores the ways a number of exegetes deal with ideas of authorial intent and textual (mis)understanding, on the basis that the Qur’anic discourse is a set of intentions, or rather an ‘intentional discourse’ ( al-khiṭāba al-qaṣadiyya). In their view, the Qur’an is a discourse, rather than a monologic, linear text. As a speech act that uses the power of the spoken utterance, it is able to use language in a ways that allow it to convey its intended meanings fully, thereby guiding the recipient to a complete understanding of the speaker’s intention. Qur’anic Arabic is a specialised language that can be understood primarily through an appreciation of authorial intention ( mabdaʾ al-qaṣad). This is the most significant element in intentional discourses, in contrast to other genres such as literature, in which the reader’s understanding of the text is guided by both linguistic and semantic conventions and personal reader reception. In the case of the Qur’an, a failure to confine oneself to seeking to understand the speaker’s intended meaning leads to misunderstandings, and thus represents the most prominent threat to an accurate understanding of its message. Misunderstandings can arise from issues such as the recipient’s lack of linguistic and rhetorical competence, or their lack of sufficient knowledge of the characteristics and qualities of the author of the discourse, not to mention the effect of personal assumptions. Exegetes have therefore attempted to arrive at a taxonomy of the degrees of textual understanding and misunderstanding of authorial intent in the Qur’an, and the range and scope of their analysis will be addressed in this article.