Research Information System
IQSA 2025 ANNUAL MEETING, California, United States Of America, 13 - 16 November 2025, pp.2, (Summary Text)
In the classical tafsir literature, the sectarian identity of exegetes
has generally remained in the background, and their works have been
studied, written and transmitted in different scholarly circles without
much care for their sectarian affiliations. In contrast, modern
historiography of tafsīr has highlighted sectarian identity as a central
criterion for textual interpretation, resulting in a dominant approach
to classification shaped by sectarian boundaries. A major example of
this tendency is al-Dhahabī (d. 1397/1977)’s al-Tafsīr wa'l-Mufassirūn,
in which the author evaluated most of the post-third-century tafsīr
works primarily according to the sectarian affiliation of its authors
and categorized them as “jāʾiz/admissible” or “madhmūm/reprehensible”.
This perspective has been maintained -though partially revised- by later
authors and has contributed to a sectarian reconstruction of the
tradition. Examined from a critical perspective, however, such sectarian
classifications do not reflect historical realities and overlook the
pluralistic nature of the classical scholarly tradition. The classical
ṭabaqāt literature (biographical dictionaries) typically organize the
mufassirūn chronologically and refer to sectarian identity only
occasionally with relative caution. In this paper, the sect-centered
reading that has taken shape in the modern period will be discussed
through the example of al-Kashshāf and its abridgments.
Although its author al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) is known for his
Muʿtazilī-Ḥanafī identiy, the work was widely received, commented upon,
and abridged by scholars belonging to a wide background of thelogical,
jurisprudential and mystical traditions, including the Māturīdīs,
Ashʿārīs, and Shīʿīs. The case of al-Kashshāf shows that the tafsīr
literature of the classical period had a supra-sectarian network of
interaction. The paper will evaluate the relationship between sectarian
identity in the classical and modern sources of the history of tafsīr,
and then, through examples from al-Kashshāf’s mukhtasars, will analyze
their intellectual contexts, purposes and choices of content. The paper
aims to make visible the text-centered interaction and circulation in
the classical period, to evaluate the limits of modern tafsir
classifications, and to explore the possibility of approaching the
history of tafsīr from a supra-sectarian perspective.