The simply titled The Study Quran represents the culmination
of almost nine years of scholarship. As explained in the general introduction, Nasr and his editorial team of four Muslim North American Islamic Studies scholars took up the project of developing a volume to stand as a complement to the HarperCollins Study Bible (2006), which was edited by Harold W. Attridge, and produced in conjunction with the Society of Biblical Literature. Prospective readers may wonder to what extent The Study Quran parallels the structure and layout of the HarperCollins Study Bible. They might wonder, as well, if The Study Quran bears the indelible yet delicate stamp of Nasrs approach to the Islamic tradition. In the introduction to the Study Bible, Attridge clearly states that the Translation Committee aimed to make the translation as literal as possible. Among the guiding concerns of the Study Bible was bringing sacred texts into English translation (as Attridge states, It is, after all, an ancient book), in a manner intelligible to modern audiences.6 Attention was also paid to facilitating careful reading through underscoring throughout the work the recurrence of certain key words.7 In the case of The Study Quran, Nasr and his team of editors outlined one of the main objectives as follows: Inasmuch as the Quran is the central, sacred, revealed reality for Muslims, The Study Quran addresses it as such and does not limit it to a work of merely historical, social, or linguistic interest divorced from its sacred and revealed character (p. xxiv). Nasr also explains the works focus on traditional Islamic views; that is, the incorporation of commentaries and the use of Quranic commentaries (tafsr) to form an interlineal text in the foot6. HarperCollins Study Bible, p.xii. 7. HarperCollins Study Bible, p.xiii.
Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016
The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary.
Editor-in-chief, Seyyed Hossein Nasr. General editors, Caner K. Dagli, Maria Massi Dakake and Joseph E. B. Lumbard. Assistant editor, Mohammed Rustom. HarperOne: New York, 2015. lx + 1,988 pages.
105
notes (p.xi). As he states, it was to be universal and at the same
time traditional, that is, expressing traditional Islamic views and therefore excluding modernistic or fundamentalist interpretations that have appeared in parts of the Islamic world during the past two centuries (p.xi). For readers, these words will lead to many questions. In earlier works, Nasr, following in the footsteps of Rene Guenon (d.1951 ce), responded to the loss of tradition, and the secularism(s) of modernity, in a way that often displaced the religious texts under consideration from their historical contexts. It often seemed that the Perennialists, with their own definitions of tradition, did not strongly question the limitations of their terminology regarding the universals of phenomenological truths. Both admirers and critics of Nasrs many works on Islamic Studies and Perennial Philosophy, published throughout the course of his long and distinguished scholarly career, will want to come to their own conclusions on their own terms, and from their own perspectives as to the tone and pitch of these lines of enquiry in The Study Quran, which focuses on the universal and the traditional with respect to reading, interpreting and understanding the Quran. In the general introduction, Nasr also clarifies how he carefully selected the editorial team working with him on The Study Quran, as well as the fifteen essay contributors. The team of editors, that is, Caner Dagli (Holy Cross College), Maria Dakake (George Mason University), Joseph Lumbard (American University of Sharjah), and Mohammed Rustom (Carleton University), translated the Quran into English, wrote commentaries on the Quran and worked as editors on the translations and commentaries. It is explained in several parts of the book that Dagli wrote commentaries for Quran 23, 89 and 218, and translated Quran 23, 89 and 228. He also authored one essay. Dakake produced commentaries on Quran 47 and 1619. She was the primary translator for Quran 47, 1012 and 1421, and contributed one essay. Lombard wrote commentaries on Quran 47, 1619, translated Quran 1, 13, 29114 and contributed two essays. Rustom wrote commentaries for Quran 1015 and 20. The general editors and assistant editor have
Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016
Book Reviews
Book Reviews
made significant contributions to re-thinking Islamic Studies,
as is most evident in the enormous amount of work they have accomplished in The Study Quran, as well as in the other scholarly works they have produced in recent years, which include translations and extensive studies of primary sources, as well as monographs and articles on different aspects of the intellectual traditions of Islam. They have all worked towards re-framing the study of Islam for multiple audiences, within academic circles and beyond academia. In terms of format and organization, The Study Quran is divided into two main sections: (1) Translation and Commentary and (2) Essays. The first section provides a new English translation, in conjunction with which the editors make accessible to English-speaking audiences a select body of classical and modern commentaries. These are explained as such: One function of the commentary is to explain the text or to point readers to a different section of the commentary that addresses more fully the particular subject. Another function is to direct readers to similar or related passages in the Quran (p.li). The number of commentaries selected, forty-one in total, aimed to be as comprehensive as possible, but is not, in fact, inclusive of all the approaches for interpreting the Quran, as is mentioned in the general introduction. In the second section, essays by Saleh, Mayer, Iqbal, al-Tayyib and Dmd in part work towards questioning and considering from different perspectives what has historically constituted commentary traditions on the Quran. Saleh, for example, poses the question of how tafsr studies have been constrained in terms of the availability of sources, i.e. what is in print, and how this has further delineated the contours and ellipses of the historical understanding of the development of Quranic commentaries (p.1,646). In terms of the introductions to each Quranic srah and the commentator key, this review will focus on one example: Srah 36, Y Sn, often understood as the heart of the Quran. The commentary first provides an explanation of the Arabic letters, y and sn, which are the disjoined letters or al-muqat, and supports this with references to Quran 2:1. The interlin-
Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016
106
107
eal commentary also makes reference to the tafsr of Qushayr,
abbreviated as (Q), as follows: In this context, the diminutive O little human being is a term of endearment interpreted as Gods address to the Prophet Muhammad. Others say that Y Sn is a name given to the Prophet by God whose exact meaning is unknown (Q). The next part of the commentary also briefly explains how commentators take Y Sn to be a name of the Quran itself (p.1,070). The fifteen essays, which are written in an approachable and accessible style, determine the lines of discourse and discussion of the Quran historically and thematically in particular. These essays will engage readers who are reading the Quran for the first time, as well as those who have acquired a depth of experience in terms of studying the Quran. The essays are as follows: Matteson, How to Read the Quran; Lumbard, The Quran in Translation; al-Azami, The Islamic View of the Quran; Abdel Haleem, Quranic Arabic; Saleh, Quranic Commentaries; Mayer, Traditions of Esoteric and Sapiential Quranic Commentary; Iqbal, Scientific Commentary on the Quran; al-Tayyib, The Quran as a Source of Islamic Law; Dmd, The Quran and Schools of Islamic Theology and Philosophy; Chittick, The Quran and Sufism; Michon, The Quran and Islamic Art; Lumbard, The Quranic View of Sacred History and other Religions; Dakake, Quranic Ethics, Human Rights, and Society; Dagli, Conquest and Conversion, War and Peace in the Quran; and Yusuf, Death, Dying, and the Afterlife in the Quran. The Study Quran also includes biographies of the essay authors; three appendices: adth citations, time-lines of events related to the Quran and commentator biographies; an index for the work as a whole (which is organized with four types of locator numbers); and maps. Finally, prospective readers may be interested in situating The Study Quran in terms of other available scholarly works and compendiums on the Quran, such as The Cambridge Companion to the Quran (2007), edited by McAuliffe; The Blackwell Companion to the Quran (2008); and a forthcoming co-edited volume by Dakake and Madigan, Routledge Compan-
Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016
Book Reviews
Book Reviews
ion to the Quran. These collective works undoubtedly have
their strengths and limitations in approaching the Quran. Nonetheless, they point to the vibrancy of the field of Quranic Studies as well as the number of intellectual discourses currently in place for thinking across disciplines and fields of academic study, and beyond. So does The Study Quran. These projects shed a very different light on the study of the Quran than earlier academic studies. Furthermore, they employ different perspectives than suggested in recent debates in Religious Studies specific to the academic study of Islam and the Quran. For example, in the wake of many recent publications on the Quran, scholars such as Aaron Hughes, Andrew Rippin and Herbert Berg have argued for the need to locate methodological and theoretical approaches vis-a-vis commitments to the academic study of religion and its values of objectivity, raising questions about the academic study of religious texts and scriptures. In particular, in the North American context, in terms of the study of Islam and the Quran, the values of objectivity that are underscored in approaching the Quran often echo a set of unvoiced questions and concerns about scholarly commitments. The Study Quran, on the other hand, belongs to a series of works that places value on Islamic intellectual history as a tradition. In sum, one of the most valuable contributions of The Study Quran is its plurality of viewpoints and perspectives, which work towards introducing students to the study of the Quran, and providing multiple audiences, Muslim, and non-Muslim, with frameworks for reading, and engaging in, the Quran. Elizabeth R. Alexandrin Department of Religion University of Manitoba
Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society, Vol. 59, 2016