An Evaluation on the Work Named Kur’ân ve Bağlam (The Qur’ān and Context)

The work named Kur’ân ve Bağlam (The Qur’ān and Context), which has constituted the main theme of our research was written by Professor Doctor Ahmet Nedim SERINSU. As a multidimensional work, it consists of three different books complementing each other entitled “Kur’ân’ın Anlaşılmasında Esbâb-ı Nüzûl’ün Rolü (The Role of Asbāb an-nuzūl in Understanding the Qur’ān), Sa’lebe Kıssası-Esbâb-ı Nüzûl’e Yeni Bir Yaklaşım (The Parable of Thaʿlaba-A New Approach to Asbāb an-nuzūl), Tarihsellik ve Esbâb-ı Nüzûl (Historicity and Asbāb an-nuzūl)”. The definition and determination of the meaning areas of the concepts and other meaning dimensions, the place and the importance of the Science of Asbāb an-nuzūl in the Qur’ānic Sciences have been discussed in the work called Kur’ân’ın Anlaşılmasında Esbâb-ı Nüzûl’ün Rolü (The Role of Asbāb an-nuzūl in Understanding the Qur’ān). The narration of “Asbāb an-nuzūl” has been examined and evaluated within the framework of new approach principles in the work called Sa’lebe Kıssası-Esbâb-ı Nüzûl’e Yeni Bir Yaklaşım (The Parable of Thaʿlaba-A New Approach to Asbāb an-nuzūl). The necessity of historical knowledge in the discovery of contextual knowledge; the determination of the history-context relationship; the conditions and degrees where this determination is necessary; the definition and description of the concept of historicity in various fields such as philosophy, philosophy of history, epistemology, hermeneutics, linguistics; and finally this term’s role in understanding the Qur’ān have been discussed in the work named Tarihsellik ve Esbâb-ı Nüzûl (Historicity and Asbāb an-nuzūl). The main objective of our research -by conveying the information in its content- is to determine the place of this study in the literature, to identify the aspects of this work that has distinguished it from other works, to make evaluations where they are necessary and to convey the results which we have reached transparently. Our article critically evaluates Ahmet Nedim SERINSU’s Kurʾān ve Bağlam in the light of classical and modern tafsīr methodologies, and examines its methodological innovations and limitations in contextual interpretation. As far as we had determined, determining the conceptual framework and boundaries of the science of Asbāb an-nuzūl systematically, understanding the causes and the stakeholders of the verses more clearly, recommending a new method for the whole process, and finding the level of theoretical knowledge with concrete events and examples in real life as a more realistic equivalent are the features of the work which make it different from the other works. Considering the conditions of the time period in which the work had been written, the contribution of this attention and the care to the field of Tafsīr is a remarkable truth. The proposal of a rich interpretation method and accurate tracking technique has a seminal quality for other new studies.