Investigation and Critique of Wansbrough’s View on the Typology and Chronological Evolution of Old Quranic Commentaries on the Basis of Mujahid’s Commentary

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In his book Quranic Studies, Wansbrough presents two criteria of style and function for typification of old commentatorial texts before al-Tabari. Recognizing twelve commentatorial devices and borrowing some expressions from Jewish commentatorial works, he divides old Quranic commentaries into five categories of parabolic, juristic, textual, rhetorical, and analogical. Based on literary analysis, he believes in the same chronology of those types, save the last. Surveying chain of transmission as well as text of Mudjahid’s commentary, the present essay evaluates Wansbrough’s style of typification and literal analysis and reveals that the core of written form of Mudjahid’s commentary, whose major characteristic is lexical explanation, goes back to the early half of the second Hijri century. Contrary to Wansbrough’s view, therefore, early types of Quranic commentaries were lexical and not parabolic.

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