PERFECT GUIDE TO THE SCIENCES OF THE QURAN pdf download

Perfect Guide To The Sciences Of The Quran Al Itqan Fi Ulum Al Quran By Imam Suyuti

PERFECT GUIDE TO THE SCIENCES OF THE QURAN

The work before you, some twenty chapters of excerpts from Jalal ‘1-Din ‘1-Suyuti’s ‘l-Itqanfi ‘Ulum al-Qur’an, is a translation of what this celebrated polymath considered indispensable linguistic and stylistic tools for comprehending the meanings of the Koran.

Whilst the translation itself is to my knowledge unprecedented, the use of Itqan material as such in modern studies of the Koran is not, the most significant being that of Theodore Noldeke’s still invaluable, Geschichte des Qoran.

And whilst the Itqan is rightly described both as an invaluable “introduction to the critical study of the Koran”“, as well as “a monumental synthesis of the quranic sciences” its greater value would seem to lie in the as yet fledgling area of higher critical studies of the Koran.

 Arkoun might well have had just this in mind when he complained of an “epistemological myopia” common to both western as well as Islamic scholars who hesitate in applying modem linguistic tools such as narrative analysis or semiology to the Koran.

 To this category, I would suggest, belong those traditionalists, for whom Koranic studies ventures not beyond the search for even greater literary clarity and thematic coherence in the Koran;

 this includes those Arabists, who—when not involved in some translation— perpetuate their convention of trying to isolate and define Islamic society, or the Arab mind, or