Tradition, Authority and Innovation in Contemporary Sunnī tafsīr: Towards a Typology of Qur'an Commentaries from the Arab World, Indonesia and Turkey

This paper discusses a sample of eleven extensive works of tafsīr – in the narrow sense of the word, i.e. tafsīr musalsal – written by Sunnī authors from Egypt, Syria, Indonesia and Turkey between 1967 and 2004. For the purpose of analysis, it proposes a basic typology based on the author(s) and style of the respective commentaries, differentiating between ‘scholars’ commentaries', ‘institutional commentaries’ and ‘popularising commentaries’. It goes on to examine the way in which they make use of exegetical authorities and traditions in their discussion of two particular exegetical problems found in Q 9:111–12. The results allow for the introduction of additional analytic categories based on the authors' aims and underlying attitudes. Building on these, the paper points to regional tendencies within contemporary Qur'anic exegesis and argues that regional differences can, to a large extent, be explained by differences in the structure and curricula of academic theology within the Islamic World. In general, it concludes that the genre of tafsīr tends to be a domain of male academic theologians and a relatively conservative field; boldly innovative approaches to the interpretation of the Qur'an are more frequently found in other exegetical genres.