The Last of The Nishapuri School of Tafsir Al-Wahidi... by Walid A. Saleh

The Last of the Nishapuri School of Tafsir:
Al-Wahidi (d. 468/1076) and His Signicance

in the History of Quranic Exegesis
Walid A. Saleh
University of Toronto
When asked why he would not write a Quran commentary, Abu HEamid al-Ghazali (d. 505/
1111) is said to have replied, What our teacher al-Wahidi wrote sufces. This story was
rst reported by al-Yai (d. 768/1367), who did not divulge the identity of his source. 1 Yet
there is no reason not to accept this statement as historical. We have supporting evidence
from al-Ghaza lis works which clearly shows that he admired the works of al-Wah idi. 2
Medieval biographers were certain that al-Ghazali borrowed the titles for three of his qh
works from those of al-Wahidis three Quran commentaries. 3 But a historian is nevertheless
bound to ask if such praise was warranted and not occasioned by mere decorum: the writers
were contemporary, both Shaites from the same region, and both patronized by the same
regime, the Saljuqs (and specically by the vizier Nizam al-Mulk and his brother). 4 Even so,
al-Wahidis is a surprising name for al-Ghazali to choose, at least in light of what we know
of the history of Quranic exegesis. Al-Wahidi does not come to mind when one conjures
up names of illustrious medieval Quran commentators; his Asbab nuzul al-Quran (The
Occasions of Revelations), the work that secured his reputation in the modern era, is not a
book the author himself was proud of, nor could one entertain the notion that it was at the
root of al-Ghazalis admiration. It is, however, reasonable to consider al-Ghazalis statement
as his own judgment on the eld of Quranic studies. Such an assessment by a gure like
al-Ghazali forces us to look more carefully at al-Wahidi, to try to nd what al-Ghazali found
impressive. But can we assess al-Wahidis legacy? This article will offer an intellectual biography of al-Wahidi, a survey of his surviving works, and an initial analysis of his hermeneutical method. It will also show that he was a towering intellectual gure of his time: both
I should like to acknowledge the nancial assistance of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), whose
funding for my research in Cairo was essential for this study. The help I received from ARCEs dedicated staff was
instrumental in obtaining materials from Dar al-Kutub and al-Azhar University Library. I am also indebted to Professor Abd al-Rahim Abu Husayn, a chair of the History Department at the American University of Beirut, and
Professor Ibrahim Kalin at Holy Cross College, for helping to obtain material from Istanbul. Special thanks go to
Shihab Ahmed of Harvard University for taking the trouble to check some manuscripts on site in Istanbul, and who
informed me of a copy of al-Basit that I did not know about. Finally I would like to thank the anonymous reader
who offered very helpful suggestions, for which I am grateful.
1. See Abu Abd Allah al-Yai, Mirat al-jinan (Beirut: Muassasat al-Alami li-al-Matbuat, 1974), 2:208;
see also Jawdat al-Mahdi, al-Wahidi wa-manhajuh f i al-tafsir (Cairo: Wizarat al-Thaqafah, 1977), 403 for more
references on this anecdote.
2. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ihya ulum al-din (Cairo: Matbaat al-Babi al-Halabi, 1957), 1: 40, advises the
student who wants to know about the Quran to read al-Wahidis al-Wajiz and al-Wasit. See al-Wahidi, al-Wajiz,
ed. Safwan Dawudi (Damascus: Dar al-Qalam, 1995), 1: 45.
3. Al-Yai, Mirat, 3: 96; Shams al-Din al-Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala, ed. Shuayb al-Arnaut (Beirut:
Muassasat al-Risalah, 1984), 18: 340.
4. See Yaqut al-Hamawi, Mujam al-udaba, ed. A. F. al-Rifai (Cairo: Dar al-Mamun, 1938), 12: 260.
Journal of the American Oriental Society 126.2 (2006)
an exegete of pervasive inuence and surprising originality, and a critic whose commentary
on al-Mutanabbis poetry is still a standard work.
i. introduction
A major problem facing any scholar studying the history of tafsir is that many commentaries are still unedited. In the absence of any systematic attempt at publishing what survives
of this massive literature, one has to rely on a close inspection of what is available in various
manuscript collections as well as in printed texts. 5 It is best to concentrate on a certain
historical period and attempt a full description and analysis of the works produced therein.
Scholars working on the early history of tafsir (the pre-Tabari phase) have recognized the
signicance of unpublished material for the history of this period. 6 Here we will call attention to other periods in the history of this genre. 7
Ali b. Ahmad al-Wahidi al-Naysaburi (d. 486/1076) was an important author of tafsir
who has been neglected by western scholars and, to a lesser extent, in the Muslim world.
My interest in al-Wahidi grew out of my work on his teacher al-Thalabi (d. 427/1035) and
my investigation of the reasons behind Ibn Taymiyahs (d. 728/1328) attacks on both writers.
(He faulted both al-Thalabi and, less so, al-Wahidi, for transmitting weak traditions.) 8
Having read extensive parts of al-Wahidis as yet unpublished major work, al-Basit (The
Large Commentary), I am convinced that it is one of the masterpieces of medieval Quran
commentaries. Not only was it of crucial signicance for the history of the genre, being
widely inuentialfor example, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 606/1210) used al-Basit as a major
source for his Mafatih al-ghaybbut it promises to advance our knowledge of the language
of the Quran itself, since it is one of the earliest exhaustive philological Quran commentaries to survive. 9
But al-Wahidis achievements do not end here. He produced two other commentaries,
al-Wasit (The Middle Commentary) and al-Wajiz (The Short Commentary). Al-Wajiz held
sway for more than six centuries as the most accessible short commentary on the Quran,
until the appearance of Tafsir al-Jalalayn in the 10th/16th century, which was itself based
on al-Wajiz. 10 It continues to be popular and has been published repeatedly. 11 Al-Wasit was
5. In the last twenty years an attempt to edit the massive literature of tafsir has been launched in graduate
programs in universities in Saudi Arabia and Egypt; many of the editions appearing these days were originally submitted as dissertations.
6. This process was begun by John Wansbrough in his Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural
Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977).
7. Some modern Muslim scholars have offered cursory surveys of the genre, relying on both printed texts and
manuscripts; unfortunately, these studies are neither comprehensive nor do they adopt a critical-historical approach.
The standard survey of tafsir works in Arabic is Muhammad Husayn al-Dhahabi, al-Tafsir wa-al-mufassirun, 3 vols.
(Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah, 1961). Jamal J. Elias has also studied the unpublished Quran commentary of al-Simnani
(d. 736/1336); see his The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of Ala ad-Dawla as-Simnani (Albany:
State Univ. of New York Press, 1995). See also G. Bwering, The Quran Commentary of Al-Sulami, in Islamic
Studies Presented to Charles Adams, ed. W. E. Hallaq and D. B. Little (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 4165.
8. See my The Formation of the Classical Tafsir Tradition: The Quran Commentary of al-Thalabi (d. 427/
1035) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 20521.
9. The rst to draw attention to al-Razis dependency on al-Wahidi was Jawdat al-Mahdi in his pioneering
work, al-Wahidi wa-manhajuh fi al-tafsir. See also Jacques Jomier, Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (m. 606H./1210) et les
commentaires du Coran plus anciens, MIDEO 15 (1982): 15859, who mentions al-Wahidi as a source for al-Razi.
10. See al-Wajiz, 1: 56; Dawudi, Tabaqat al-mufassirin, 1: 100.
11. The rst publication of al-Wajiz was on the margins of Muhammad al-Nawawis Marah Labid (al-Tafsir
al-munir li-maalim al-tanzil al-mufassir an wujuh mahasin al-tawil al-musamma tibqan li-manah Marah Labid
li-kashf mana Quran majid), 2 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-Arabiyah, 1305/188788). The second is the critical
edition by Safwan Dawudi (n. 2 above). Claude Gilliot mentions a 1955 edition by Mustafa al-Saqqa in his entry
One Line Long
Saleh: The Last of the Nishapuri School of Tafsir
famously popular in the medieval period and has recently witnessed a comeback after being
edited. 12 It has been wrongly assumed that al-Wasit is an abridgement of al-Basit, a notion
rst opined in the medieval biographical dictionaries. 13 This is not the case. Each commentary is an independent composition governed by different hermeneutical rules and
assumptions. The relationship among the three is itself a fascinating story that documents
the tortured response of a medieval mind to the problem of the meaning of the Quran. Fortunately all three commentaries are accessible, and together with their introductions they
offer us a unique opportunity to examine al-Wahidis varying hermeneutical approaches.
Later, I will given an example from each commentary and show how they differ in their
approach. If we add the introduction to Asbab nuzul al-Quran we have four explicit statements by al-Wahidi as to methods of Quranic interpretation. 14 That he saw the need to keep
producing commentaries, each with a different approach, distinguishes al-Wahidi from most
other classical exegetes. I know of no other scholar who wrote three independent commentaries that have survived. The other extant examples are by scholars who wrote epitomes of
their own major works.
What is perhaps most compelling about al-Wahidi is that he was at the center of the intellectual life of his age. He was an outstanding critic who produced what was considered
the best commentary on one of the most important Arabic poets, al-Mutanabbi (d. 354/955).
Thus his signicance must be seen in the light of his total literary production. He was well
aware of the intellectual concerns of the elite and responded to the two fundamental texts
of the culture in which he lived: the Quran and the poetry of al-Mutanabbi. 15 In his works
we witness a critical moment in the hermeneutical history of medieval Islam, where the
compromises worked out in the rst four centuries have become unraveled and must be reconstructed. Al-Wahidis three Quran commentaries, with their different attitudes and conicting methods of interpretation, foreshadow the agonized intellectual life of his younger
contemporary al-Ghazali. His time was one of unsettled certainties, profound anxieties,
and widespread intellectual alienation, all of which were at the root of the creativity of the
period. In this sense, the study of tafsir must be conducted within the wider realm of
Islamic intellectual history; and any serious study of intellectual trends in Sunni Islam must
take into account the contributions and articulations of the exegetes, who were central to
the formation of Islamic identity.
ii. al-wAHidI, the nishapuri school,

and the history of qurAnic exegesis
I have argued elsewhere that the three Nishapuri exegetes Ibn Habib (d. 406/1015), alThalabi (d. 427/1035) and al-Wahidi (d. 468/1076) constitute one of the more inuential
on al-Wahidi (Textes arabes anciens dits en Egypte, MIDEO 24 (2000): 187). I have failed to nd any trace of
such an edition. The confusion may come from the fact that al-Saqqa himself wrote a Quran commentary called alWajiz. Gilliots source for his information is Muhammad Isa Salihiyah, al-Mujam al-shamil li-al-turath al-arabi
al-matbu (Cairo: Mahad al-Makhtutat al-Arabiyah, 1995), 5: 318.
12. Al-Wasit, ed. Adil Abd al-Mawjud et al., 4 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyah, 1994). There is also
an incomplete edition by Muhammad al-Zafiti (or al-Zufayti), 2 vols. (Cairo: 19861995), which only covers Suras
14.
13. See Ibn al-Qifti, Inbah al-ruwat ala anbah al-nuhat, ed. Muhammad Abu al-Fadl Ibrahim (Cairo: Dar alKutub al-Misriyah, 1952), 2: 223. Gilliot repeats the same information (Textes arabes, 187).
14. This popular work has been published repeatedly. The standard critical edition is by al-Sayyid Ahmad Saqr
(Asbab nuzul al-Quran, Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Jadid, 1969); this is now rare.
15. Here I follow the assessment of Ihsan Abbas in his Tarikh al-naqd al-adabi inda al-Arab: naqd al-shir
min al-qarn al-thani hatta al-qarn al-thamin al-hijri (Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1981), esp. 36197.
schools in the history of medieval Quranic exegesis, which I have termed the Nishapuri
school. 16 By calling it a school I do not mean to suggest that this group maintained a
uniform approach to the Quran, but rather to characterize a concerted effort on the part of
these scholars to come to grips with the problem of the Qurans meaning in the face of the
conict among traditional exegesis, philology, and kalam theology. I have argued that the inuence of this school was so pervasive that the medieval exegetical tradition does not make
sense unless we take into account the contribution of these scholars. In the introduction to his
al-Burhan f i ulum al-Quran, arguably the most important Sunni assessment of the genre,
al-Zarkashi (d. 794/1392) mentions the names of both al-Thalabi and al-Wahidi as well
as of the scholars who were inuenced by their methods (al-Zamakhshari, al-Razi) when
giving examples of different modes of interpretation. 17 There is rarely a classical assessment
that fails to mention al-Thalabi or al-Wahidi, even when the tone is hostile and intended
to undermine their contributions. In his attempt to redirect the course of the medieval exegetical tradition, Ibn Taymiyah targeted al-Thalabi and al-Wahidi above all for what he considered an unsound approach to the Quran. 18
Al-Thalabi and al-Wahidi attempted to answer the perennial question facing classical exegesis: what place does philology have in this enterprise? I believe that the pressing issue in
the history of classical Quran commentary was the challenge posed by the Arabic philological disciplines (the sum total of grammar, lexicography and rhetorical studies) to the
integrity of the theological understanding of the Quran. The philological tools perfected
by Arabic grammarians were used freely in analyzing poetry, especially pre-Islamic poetry,
since no religious constraints were at work. 19 Pre-Islamic poetry was by denition a heathen
corpus in which one expected to come across impieties, and religious scruples were hardly
an issue in interpreting this body of literature. Philology was thus the sole and undisputed
method for interpreting poetry. Using philology to interpret the Quran, and the pretence by
Sunni exegetes that Quranic exegesis was primarily a philological enterprise, brought new
problems for the exegetical tradition. Philology, though its initial impetus lay in the attempt
to understand the Quran, grew to become an independent discipline that would pose grave
danger to Sunni hermeneutics. 20 There could not be two philological methods, one for
poetry and one for the Quran, and scholars trained in philology were keenly aware of this
problem. 21
Muslim exegetes reacted to the rise of philology as an independent discipline by positing
two axioms about the Quran. The rst was to claim that theological and pietistic interpretations could be defended by philology, and that therefore philology was on the side of a
Sunni understanding of the Quran. The second was to posit a miraculous linguistic element
in the Quranits ijaz, its inimitabilityas its characteristic feature. So viewed, the Quran
was a classic like the pre-Islamic poetry of the philologists. We must see these commentators
16. See Formation, 122.

17. See Abu Abd Allah al-Zarkashi, al-Burhan f i ulum al-Quran, ed. Muhammad Abu al-Fadl Ibrahim
(Beirut: Dar al-Marifah, 1972), 1: 13.
19. For example, al-Wahidi states, regarding the irrelevance of religious sentiments to the philological reading of
a line of verse, that opinions and doctrinal beliefs do not diminish the excellence of poetry (Mutanabii Carmina
cum commentario Wahidii [Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi], ed. F. Dieterici, Berlin: 1861), 331.
20. On the origins and rise of the Arabic philological tradition see C. H. M. Versteegh, Arabic Grammar and
Quranic Exegesis in Early Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1993).
as actively seeking to replace the corpus of classicism in the emerging culture with their own
corpus, the Quran. The Quran was Sunni when read using philology, and of equal significance, the Quran was as profoundly sublime as any of the pre-Islamic poetry, if not more so.
Eventually, the Quran would come to replace Jahili poetry as a mine for linguistic exemplars
in the Arabic grammar handbooks. The doctrine of the Qurans inimitability would win the
day, insofar as no Muslim sect would challenge this doctrine, despite the mufed complaints
of some intellectuals.
The rst part of this compromise, whereby philology was seen as the handmaid of
Sunnism, would come under continuous strain, almost from the moment it was conceived,
until it was eventually called into question by the time of Ibn Taymiyah. Al-Wahidi was one
of the few medieval exegetes who attempted to salvage the integrity of the Sunni hermeneutical enterprise by siding with philology and dropping the pretence that a Sunni reading
can consistently withstand the probing of philology. This was no doubt a bitter cup to
drink, and all indications point to al-Wahidis continuous intellectual crisis, as shown by his
repeated publications in tafsir. His was a life spent writing commentaries, in which hermeneutics was the promised gate to salvation.
Another important factor that tafsir had to deal with was the rise of kalam theology as
an independent discipline and its integration into Sunnism as a component of its paradigm. 22 Tafsir responded to this trend by incorporating kalam elements and explicitly making
theology a pronounced component of the genre. It is not that tafsir was not theological
it was primarily theologicalbut scholastic theology, with dened terms and concepts,
began to make inroads into tafsir. The trend was started by al-Thalabi, who attacked both
the Mutazilites and the Shiites; al-Wahidi would see to it that theology became an essential
part of his al-Basit, and would eventually be at the heart of al-Razis commentary.
Al-Basit, al-Wahidis major work, came at a crucial moment in the history of Quranic
exegesis. Sunnism, and to some extent Asharism as well, ourished as the Saljuqs gained
momentum and Sunni scholars became more daring. Conceived when al-Wahidi was still
young, impetuous, and resolute, al-Basit attempted to give the philological method as free
a rein as possible. Coming to exegesis from classical Arabic philology, al-Wahidi seems to
have been surprised by the amateurish approach of many exegetes before him. He proceeded
to function under the presumption that philology supports a Sunni reading of the Quran
which should not be undermined by allowing it to mingle with non-philological readings.
There was an unprecedented resolve in al-Wahidis attempt to discard what were, to him,
unfounded methods of understanding the Quran; but his approach was eventually modied,
as he seems to have decided that if the Sunni inherited traditions as to what the Quran means
could not be jettisoned en masse, they could nevertheless be evaluated, and philology would
be the judge. Al-Basit is in this sense a peculiar text, since in order to appreciate its significance fully one has to delve into the biography of its author and understand his intellectual
background and training, and his intention. Moreover, one has to place this text in the history
of Quranic exegesis in order to gauge its importance. And since al-Basit is at variance with
al-Wahidis later approach to the Quran, it must be understood in light of his other exegetical
works. Eventually al-Wahidi saw his three commentaries as constituting a whole, which had
not been his intent when he rst embarked on the project.
22. For a theologian contemporary with al-Wahidi, Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni, see Tilman Nagel, Die
Festung des Glaubens: Triumph und Scheitern des islamischen Rationalismus im 11. Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H.
Beck, 1988).
iii. al-wAHidIs biography

A. Modern Biographies
There is no dearth of biographies of al-Wahidi by modern Muslim scholars; three of his
edited works are each supplied with a biography, though with a tendency to rely on that by
al-Sayyid Ahmad Saqr in his introduction to Asbab nuzul al-Quran. 23 The latest is that
of Dawudi, the editor of al-Wajiz. 24 We are also fortunate to have a detailed biography and
a study of al-Wahidis hermeneutical approach by Jawdat al-Mahdi (see n. 10). However,
both these modern biographies and al-Mahdis study suffer from a lack of historical perspective and a refusal to admit to development in al-Wahidis career.
In European languages we have Brockelmanns succinct entry, 25 a more extensive
biography by Claude Gilliot, 26 and a sketch in an article by Asma Afsaruddin. 27 These
biographies do not go beyond reporting what is available in the medieval biographical
dictionaries, and their purpose is not analytical. Unfortunately, none of the scholars working
in Europe or the United States seem to have taken note of the work of their counterparts in
the Arab world. This is clear from Rudolph Sellheims entry for al-Wahidi in the second
edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI2), which has factual mistakes that could have been
avoided had he gone through the modern Arabic biographies and studies or, for that matter,
taken the medieval biographical dictionaries at their own word. And although one might
differ with the analyses in the modern Arabic sources, their authors have still collected all
references as to the whereabouts of the manuscripts, have edited all but one of al-Wahidis
works, and have neglected no tidbit of information about al-Wahidi in any medieval biographical source. This is not the place to discuss the relationship (or absence thereof )
between Arabic scholars and their counterparts in Europe and North America; but tafsir
studies will remain heavily dependent on the work of these scholars, who are editing and
making available this massive literature. Inattention to their work results inevitably in plowing the same ground.
Little is gained from a biography of al-Wahidi that does not situate him in his intellectual
environment. More important is to chart the intellectual development of his career, which
can be reconstructed because of our ability to date his works. I will outline here the most
important aspects of al-Wahidis life, give a list of his extant works and a chronology of
their publication by the author, and discuss their relationship with one another. In so doing
I will offer a preliminary assessment of the signicance of his works to the history of
Quranic exegesis.
B. Sources
There are three sources for reconstructing al-Wahidis life. Two are independent accounts
by fellow scholars who knew him well. The rst by Ali ibn al-Hasan al-Bakharzi (d. 467/
1075), has survived in the abridged recension of his biographical dictionary. 28 The second
23. Asbab, introduction, 538.
24. Al-Wajiz, 1167.
25. K. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur (GAL) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1943), 1: 41112, Supp.
1: 73031.
26. Gilliot, Texte arabes, 18387.
27. Asma Afsaruddin, Constructing Narratives of Monition and Guile: The Politics of Interpretation, Arabica
48 (2001): 32931.
28. Ali b. al-Hasan al-Bakharzi, Dumyat al-qasr wa-usrat ahl al-asr, ed. Muhammad al-Tunji (Beirut: Dar
al-Jil, 1971?75), 2: 101720.
is by one of al-Wahidis students, Abd al-Ghar al-Farisi (d. 539/1135), which survives in
two versions. Yaqut al-Hamawi has preserved the longer version, which has a list of alWahidis works compiled by al-Farisi not found in the abridged printed edition. 29 The third
and most important source is al-Wahidis own account of his educational history, an intellectual autobiography that is part of his long introduction to al-Basit. 30 Parts of this
autobiography were reproduced by Yaqut in his entry on al-Wahidi. 31 Later biographical
dictionaries have interesting information to add to these sources, such as al-Yais mention
of al-Ghazalis story; I will refer to this information while reconstructing al-Wahidis life.
We are fortunate that al-Wahidi was in the habit of writing colophons to his works, which
give us the dates of their publication. To my knowledge, three of these original colophons
have survived. The rst (never mentioned in the sources) I came across while collecting
manuscripts of al-Basit; 32 the second is in a copy of Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi preserved
in al-Mawsil in Iraq; 33 the third belongs to al-Wasit and appears in the new edition. 34 These
colophons, along with internal evidence from al-Wahidis remaining works, allow us to chart
the chronology of these works and give us a rare opportunity to follow the development of
his career and offer an account of his intellectual growth.
C. Al-Wahidis Life
One is rst struck by al-Wahidis early maturation. If we trust the dates given by medieval
biographers, he must have started his educational and academic career early in his life. Most
sources agree that he died in Jumada II 468/January-February 1076, when he was in his
seventies. If we assume he died when he was 75, then he was born around 393/1003.
His prosody teacher, Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Abd Allah b. Yusuf al-Arudi, died after
29. The abridged version is available in Abd al-Ghar al-Farisi, al-Muntakhab min al-Siyaq, ed. Muhammad
Abd al-Aziz (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyah, 1989), 387. For the longer (and original) version see Yaqut, Mujam
al-udaba, 12: 25860.
30. I have used the Nuruosmaniye manuscript of al-Basit (tafsir 236, ff 17), as the basis for this study; I have
also consulted the Dar al-Kutub manuscript (tafsir 53: 1), and the al-Azhar manuscript (Riwaq al-Magharibah 303:
1 ff 14).
31. Yaqut, Mujam al-udaba, 12: 25770; for al-Wahidis autobiography see 26270. Yaquts version is not a
complete quotation of al-Basits long introduction.
32. Three copies of the last volume of al-Basit have so far been located; all preserve the authors original colophon. The style of the colophon is highly literary, which ensured that it was copied by the scribes. This colophon
is highly literary, which ensured that it was copied by the scribes. This colophon should be viewed as a continuation
of the introduction, since it elaborates on how al-Wahidi composed the work; any study of al-Basit must take this
colophon into consideration.
33. It was Dawudi who drew my attention to the catalogue of the collection in al-Mawsil in his introduction to
al-Wajiz (1: 35). See also Fihris makhtutat Maktabat al-Awqaf al-Ammah fi al-Mawsil (Baghdad: Wizarat alAwqaf, 1982), 1: 124. The whole of the colophon was transcribed by Hajji Khalifah (Kashf al-zunun, Istanbul:
Wikalat al-Maarif, 1941, 1: 811). Dietericis edition lacks the colophon. I have meanwhile received a photocopy of
the last folio of Chester Beatty Ar. 3278 (a copy of al-Wahidis Sharh) which does contain the colophon (fol. 263).
We thus have at least one manuscript with the original colophon. I am grateful to the Chester Beatty Library for
sending me the photocopy on short notice.
34. See al-Wasit, 4: 576. The manuscript containing this colophon is housed at the Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyah
(for a description see ibid., 1: 38). The colophons veracity is supported by the Berlin manuscript (Spr. 415), which
reports the same date, which appears not in a colophon but on the title page (fol. 1) as a paraphrase of the colophon.
Spr. 415 is perhaps the most important of al-Wasits preserved manuscripts. For a description see W. Ahlwardt,
Verzeichniss der arabischen Handschriften der kniglichen Bibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin: A. W. Schade, 1887), 1:
29899. I am grateful to the authorities at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin for allowing me to inspect this volume.
416/1025, when al-Wahidi was around 23; 35 his famous teacher al-Thalabi died in 427/1035,
when al-Wahidi was around 34. His apprenticeship with al-Thalabi marks the end of his
student life. Soon afterwards he began working on al-Basit; in his introduction to that work
he makes clear that he began writing it early in his life and after al-Thalabis death. 36 In his
colophon to al-Basit he states that he nished the work on 20 Rabi I 446/29 June 1054; 37
the work thus took almost two decades to complete.
Such was the impatience of his contemporaries for a publication on tafsir that he
was forced to write al-Wajiz before nishing al-Basit, as the introduction to this work
makes clear. 38 Between 446/1054, the year al-Basit was nished, and 462/1070, the year
he nished his commentary on al-Mutanabbi, al-Wahidi nalized al-Wasit, whose colophon
shows that it was completed in mid-Rajab 461/April-May 1069 (see n. 35). The introduction to his last work, Asbab nuzul al-Quran, refers to his three Quran commentaries as
nished products. One cannot speak of a single period in al-Wahidis life that was more
productive than another; he produced two of his most important works at different periods,
and was active throughout his life.
Al-Bakharzis Dumyat al-qasr, a collection of biographies of poets of the 5th/11th century
which includes excerpts from their poetry, has, as far as I know, no entries for exegetes apart
from that for al-Wahidi. The inclusion of al-Wahidi in a biographical dictionary on poets is
an indication of his high standing. Al-Bakharzi, a Nishapuri and a friend of al-Wahidi, has
left us a poignant reection on his friends career and aspirations, in which he comes across
as a poet manqu who realized he had the faculty to appreciate great poetry but was himself
not gifted as a poet. Al-Bakharzi informs us that al-Wahidi refused to publish his poetry,
and that what he himself was able to quote were pieces recited in public when the author was
still young and, one would suspect, still hoping that the muse of poetry would one day oblige.
It is a testament to al-Wahidis literary taste that he spared himself the indignity of trying to
be a poet, since what survives of his poetry is painfully mediocre.
Al-Bakharzi is the rst to hint that al-Wahidi was an unhappy man who suffered from a
sense of alienation and isolation from his contemporaries. This assessment is supported by
the rather dark tone of al-Wahidis introductions to his works. There he typically assesses his
age, measures its corruption, laments the decline of knowledge, and upbraids his contemporaries for their banality. These topoi, although admittedly formulaic, should nevertheless be
taken as reecting al-Wahidis state of mind. His contemporaries were quick to complain that
he was only too happy to denigrate other scholars, and in his introductions he showered
disdain on everyone. Indeed, in the introduction to al-Wajiz al-Wahidi is openly contemptuous of, and rude to, his contemporaries en masse. It is easy to see why he felt an afnity
for the self-aggrandizing poet al-Mutanabbi. One is left with the impression that apart from
writing al-Basit and Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi, his two major works, he was forced to
write the others for less serious reasons: either to satisfy a mediocre audience, to put an end
35. On this scholar see al-Farisi, al-Muntakhab, 186; see also al-Dhahabi, Siyar, 17: 389. For an exhaustive list
of al-Wahidis teachers (shuyukh) see Dawudis introduction to al-Wajiz, 1318.
36. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 6a.
37. Al-Basit, al-Azhar, Riwaq al-Magharibah 303/5, fol. 209b.
38. Sellheim (like Ahlwardt before him), in his entry on al-Wahidi in EI2, states that al-Wahidi began al-Wajiz
in 409/1018. This is impossible. Ahlwardt deduced this information from the dating of an isnad by al-Wahidi at the
beginning of al-Wajiz (see 86); that al-Wahidi wrote down a prophetic tradition in 409/1018 does not mean that he
was writing his book at that time. Moreover, he would have been around 16, which means that he would have begun
al-Basit at an even earlier age.
to shoddy scholarship, to try to mitigate the unease of his conscience regarding his hermeneutical position, or to ward off accusations of rebelliousness from his contemporaries.
D. Philology and al-Wahidis Intellectual Formation
Few medieval scholars have left us as much information about their intellectual formation
as has al-Wahidi. His introduction to al-Basit charts the detailed history of his education, 39
rst in grammar, literature and prosody, and lexicography, i.e., the sum of the Arabic philological tradition as perfected by the 5th/11th century. He spent his formative years with
grammarians and rhetoricians, read most of the diwans of the Arabic poets, studied the dictionary of al-Azhari (d. 370/980), and left no major work of poetry unread. The inuence
of his prosody teacher, Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Abd Allah al-Arudi (d. after 416/1025), on
al-Wahidis career is evident. As late as 462/1070, some four decades after al-Arudis death,
al-Wahidi was still using the notes taken in classes with this teacher in his commentary on alMutanabbis poetry. 40 Al-Arudi was a major inuence on this commentary; and it was he
who pushed al-Wahidi to study tafsir with al-Thalabi.
Al-Wahidi also informs us that he read all the works of the major grammarians with the
outstanding teachers of his age. His pedigree in the philological sciences ensured him an
entry in the most illustrious of medieval biographical dictionaries devoted to grammarians,
Ibn al-Qiftis (d. 646/1248) Inbah al-ruwat. 41 From what al-Wahidi tells us, his grammar
teacher, Abu al-Hasan Ali b. Muhammad al-Quhunduzi, took exceptional care in his education and was very fond of him. 42 Al-Wahidi suggests that this teacher recognized in him
the greatness to come. 43 It is in relation to al-Quhunduzi that al-Wahidi mentions the word
happiness, an indication of the degree of his fondness for and personal attachment to this
teacher.
Al-Wahidi also studied with itinerant scholars who passed through Nishapur, such as the
grammarian Abu al-Hasan Umran b. Musa al-Maghribi (d. 430/1038), who hailed from the
western Islamic world. 44 He also studied variant Quranic readings with the leading scholars
of the age. 45 He traveled through the eastern Iranian provinces in search of hadith knowledge. This can be conrmed from the isnads (chains of transmission) to many of the traditions cited in his works, in which he habitually mentions the year and the locale where he
heard a certain tradition; they thus provide an invaluable source for reconstructing his travels.
In his introduction to al-Basit, al-Wahidi claims that the years he spent studying literature,
poetry, grammar, language, and prosody were all in preparation for his study of tafsir, and
not (apparently) for a career in poetry. I see al-Wahidis turn to exegesis as the result of his
realization that he was not going to be the poet he aspired to be. But there is no denying
that the study of philology shaped him intellectually. In this he is rather exceptional among
medieval exegetes, since he entered into the study of tafsir after being formed by philology.
This is perhaps the most important aspect of his intellectual formation; it also explains his
initial distance from the exegetical tradition, which can easily be detected in al-Basit.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
I have used my own edition of this introduction (see n. 30).

See Mutanabbii Carmina, 825, for an example.
Ibn al-Qifti, Inbah, 2: 22325.
For detailed references on al-Quhunduzi see al-Mahdi, al-Wahidi, 67; al-Wajiz, 13.
Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 5b.
Al-Mahdi, al-Wahidi, 67.
On al-Wahidis Quran teachers see ibid., 6768.
10
From the introduction to al-Basit we can determine that al-Wahidi spent the years from
around 416/1024 to 427/1035 studying exclusively with al-Thalabi, 46 with whom he read all
the literature of tafsir as well as his teachers own works. He thus had a formidable preparation encompassing both Arabic literary and philological works as well as tafsir. Yet he did
not follow in the footsteps of his teacher al-Thalabi, whose encyclopedic approach, which
insured that tafsir became an integrative discipline that refused to admit contradictions about
the different Sunni hermeneutical traditions (philological, pietistic, narrative, mystical, etc.),
was rejected by his student. 47 Instead, each of al-Wahidis commentaries attempted to solve
the problem of Sunni hermeneutics from a different angle.
It is important to emphasize that al-Wahidi saw his preparation in philology as giving
him an advantage over many, if not all, earlier exegetes. The introduction to al-Basit makes
clear that he believed that grammar and literature were the foundation and the sine qua non
of exegesis; 48 and insofar as they had not been used by previous exegetes, the works of the
latter were lacking. Indeed, he claims that the early layer of tafsir was itself in many ways
in need of explication, so as to make clear in what sense it was an explanation of the Quran.
Moreover, al-Wahidi is impatient with non-philological interpretations and decides neither to
cite them nor to refute them, insofar as they are neither defensible by philology nor, indeed,
possible. 49 Thus, unlike al-Thalabi, who sought to draw on the collective Sunni tradition to
write his Quran commentary, using in the process at least a hundred works, 50 al-Wahidi
claims that the works of his predecessors were only an approximation of what the Quran
said and not a true explanation.
The references in biographical dictionaries to a sharp-tongued al-Wahidi eager to attack
and ridicule earlier authorities reinforce my reading of him as a dissatised author who felt
alienated from his environment. Al-Farisi, in the longer version of his biography quoted by
Yaqut, said that al-Wahidi deserved all respect and honor and more, if only he had not been
readily willing to ridicule and despise, sometimes all too subtly, the venerable preceding
generations of scholars, and to unleash his tongue against people who deserve better; may
God forgive him and them. 51 Al-Dhahabi gives an example of this tendency to defame; he
quotes al-Wahidi as saying: Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami [d. 412/1021?] wrote Haqaiq
al-tafsir; and should he claim that this book is a commentary on the Quran, then he is an
unbeliever. 52 Haqaiq al-tafsir, one of the most famous mystical Quran commentaries, was
both ridiculed and rejected by al-Wahidi. This attack must have been proclaimed in one of
his public lectures, for no record of it exists in his works; but there is no reason to doubt
its veracity. Al-Wahidi, the champion of the philological approach to the Quran, was hard
pressed to accept the traditional Sunni exegetical tradition, let alone the mystical approach.
Al-Dhahabi would exonerate al-Wahidi, seeing no harm in so just an assessment against alSulami; however, al-Wahidis scathing remarks were apparently not enough to ingratiate him
with Ibn Taymiyah (see above and n. 8).
46. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 6a.
47. For the encyclopedic approach see Formation, 1423.
48. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 2b.
49. Ibid., fol. 4b5a. See my forthcoming edition and translation of the introduction to al-Basit for more details
on al-Wahidis views on tafsir as presented in this commentary.
50. On al-Thalabis sources see Formation, 6776.
51. Yaqut, Mujam al-udaba, 12: 260.
52. Al-Dhahabi, Siyar, 18: 342. The same story is told by al-Subki, if slightly differently; there it is clear that
al-Wahidis statement was made in an oral communication, a public lecture of some sort (al-Subki, Tabaqat alShaiyah al-kubra, ed. Abd al-Fattah al-Hilw, Cairo: Matbaat al-Babi al-Halabi, 1966, 5: 241).
11
In their assessment of this information modern Muslim scholars are eager to limit alFarisis general statement to the sole example of al-Wahidis criticism of al-Sulami; 53 he is
seen as simply attacking an indefensible method of interpretation. Yet to accept this analysis
is to miss the true nature of what al-Farisi hints at. Al-Wahidi, in his disregard for the preceding generations of exegetes in the introduction to al-Basit, was seen by his contemporaries
as making too harsh a judgment on the exegetical tradition and its authorities. Al-Farisi
was all too aware of what his teacher was up to. His contemporaries must have mounted a
counterattack, for al-Wahidi would eventually moderate his position. The degree of this moderation is the crux of the matter: was al-Wahidi convinced of the validity of his teachers
method, or was he simply submitting to a pious sentiment? I think both.
iv. al-wAHidIs works

Medieval biographers state that al-Wahidi was fortunate because his works were popular
(ruziqa al-saadah fi kutubih), highly praised, and often mentioned in lectures by professors
in seminaries. 54 A quick survey of medieval exegetical literature conrms this assessment
and shows that he was a well-known author and a highly regarded exegete. 55 Sellheims
entry on al-Wahidi, mentioned above, has produced some confusion as to which of his works
have survived and what exactly he composed, listing works and titles that do not now exist
and for which there is no evidence for their existence. This confusion comes from Ahlwardts
catalogue of the Berlin Arabic collection, which Sellheim used as his main source. 56 Ahlwardt, writing in the late nineteenth century when none of al-Wahidis had been published,
had limited resources with which to work. Moreover, he misunderstood a critical paragraph
in al-Wasit, which I will discuss later. Modern scholars have inherited further confusion
stemming from the medieval manuscript tradition. Medieval scholars referred to al-Wahidis
three Quran commentaries with the rubric the one that contains the sum total of meanings
(al-hawi li-jami anwa al-maani), 57 a phrase that found its way to the title pages of many
manuscripts of al-Wasit and was eventually copied into modern biographies and catalogues
as an independent title of yet another Quran commentary. 58 Some manuscripts have titles
that are later additions, such as Jami al-maani, for al-Basit. 59 Mere reliance on catalogues
53. Saqr, for example, wonders if there is any other position to take vis--vis al-Sulamis mystical nonsense.
He enlists the support of Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597/1201), who in his famous Talbis Iblis also attacks al-Sulami (see
Saqrs introduction to Asbab, 67).
54. He was the master of his age in grammar and exegesis; he gained felicity in his writings, to the excellence
of which all agreed, and which teachers cited in their lessons. Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat al-ayan wa-anba abna alzaman, ed. Ihsan Abbas (Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafah, 1978), 3: 303. Ibn al-Qifti (Inbah, 2: 223) states that people
sought him out for his knowledge.
55. See al-Wajiz, 1: 3941.
56. Ahlwardt, Verzeichniss, 1: 298301.
57. See, e.g., Hajji Khalifah (Katib elebi), Kashf al-zunun, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaasi, 19411956,
repr. 1971), 1: 629: the one that contains the sum total of meanings [al-hawi li-jami al-maani] titled al-Basit, alWasit and al-Wajiz, by-al-Wahidi.
58. An inspection of a manuscript with the same title from Dar al-Kutub in Cairo (Taymur Tafsir 117) showed
that it is a volume of al-Wasit, which is written on the title page (fol. 3a). I compared fol. 3b of Taymur 117, which
comments on Quran 4:94, with its counterpart in the printed edition (al-Wasit, 2: 1012); they correspond exactly.
Brockelmann (GAL, S I: 731) cites al-Hawi li-jami al-maani as an independent title.
59. Brockelmann, GAL, S I: 731. See, for example, the title page of Chester Beatty ms. 3731, where the title for
al-Basit is given as Maani al-tafsir al-musamma bi-al-Basit.
12
of manuscript collections or, for that matter, on the title pages of manuscripts without inspecting the works themselves and comparing them to other conrmed works, has increased
this confusion. Since I do not want to enter into lengthy arguments as to why certain nonexistent works could not have been written by al-Wahidi, here I will discuss only those
works that have survived in manuscripts and are attested by the tradition, whether in biographical dictionaries or as citations in other works, and which can be conclusively demonstrated to have been authored by al-Wahidi.
Before turning to that task, however, I shall investigate the claims of some modern Arab
biographers attributing certain works to al-Wahidi that have been published or are available in manuscript collections. After examining the short epistle Fi sharaf al-tafsir (On the
Nobility of Exegesis) that survives in a unicum, it is clear to me that it is not by al-Wahidi.
The attribution was the result of a mistake by one of the owners of the manuscript, which
contains more than one work; the owner listed the manuscripts contents on the cover page,
and states that one of the epistles was by al-Wahidi. He must have been misguided by the fact
that the epistle is anonymous and begins with the phrase al-Wahidi said. The manuscript
is now housed in Cairo, Dar al-Kutub; on the cover page there is the note: Risalah f i
sharaf al-tafsir li-al-Wahidi. 60
On inspection of a microlm copy of the manuscript, and on reading the epistle, it
becomes clear that the latter is directed against al-Wahidis position as to the best way to
interpret the Quran, as expressed in his introductions to al-Wasit and Asbab nuzul alQuran in which he claims that the only way to interpret the Quran is through received traditions. 61 The epistle is a fascinating document which shows that medieval scholars were
aware of the contradictions between al-Wahidis statements in this conservative introduction
and in the introductions of his two earlier works. Whoever wrote this epistle was a wellread scholar, for he was quick to ridicule al-Wahidis position in his later works by showing
the impossibility of maintaining it while writing Quranic commentary. The incorrect information on the title page of this manuscript found its way into the rst catalogue of Dar
al-Kutub, where it was noted by Jawdat al-Mahdi, the rst modern scholar to mention this
epistle, 62 and from there it crept into all the other Arabic biographies of al-Wahidi.
Al-Wasit f i al-amthal, edited by Afif Abd al-Rahman, has been shown by Dawudi and
Sellheim not to be by al-Wahidi. 63 Ramadan Sesens claim that the Kitab al-maghazi, a rare
manuscript in Istanbul, is by al-Wahidi is impossible to verify, since neither does the manuscript contain this attribution nor does Veven offer internal evidence to support his claim. 64
The only other works that might be by al-Wahidi are two short epistles housed in alMaktabah al-Khalidiyah in Jerusalem, which I have been unable to inspect. 65
60. Dar al-Kutub. Majami Mustafa 220, fol. 213ab. See also Fahrasat al-kutub al-Arabiyah al-mahfuzah
bi-al-Kutubkhanah al-Khidaywiyah al-Misriyah (Cairo: 1308/189091), 7/2: 693, and see also 707.
61. The anonymous author of this epistle took issue with al-Wahidis statement that among the nobilities and
glories of this science is that it does not allow argument by reason, opinion, or contemplation, without giving heed
those who bear witness to revelation through narration and transmission. See al-Wahidis introduction to al-Wasit,
1: 47.
62. Al-Mahdi, al-Wahidi, 95 (in his reference to the ms. number he dropped Mustafa).
63. See Dawudis introduction to al-Wajiz, 1: 3738. Sellheim offered his refutation in Eine unbeachtet
gebliebene Sprichwrtersammlung, Oriens 31 (1988): 91.
64. See R. Veven, Nawadir al-makhtutat f i maktabat Turkiya, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Jadidah, 1975),
3: 75.
65. See Dawudis introduction to al-Wajiz, 1: 3334.
13
A. Al-Wahidis Extant Works

Both the available manuscripts and the biographical dictionaries, whether in entries on alWahidi or on later scholars who read and studied his works, are unanimous in mentioning
only three Quran commentaries: al-Basit, al-Wasit, and al-Wajiz. That these have survived
testies to the high regard in which they were held. Adding to these the Asbab nuzul alQuran and the Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi, there are only ve surviving works that can
denitely be ascribed to al-Wahidi. Readers interested in his lost works may consult any of
the introductions to the printed editions. 66
Al-Wahidi has left us a categorization for his output in tafsir that explains his understanding of the genre and the reason why he wrote three different compilations. The paragraph,
a mere 47 words, is, despite its deceptively simple language, not readily comprehensible;
and has generated some confusion. I will offer my understanding of this paragraph, which
is part of the introduction to al-Wasit, and was thus written with the condence of hindsight
and, one might add, with the intention to justify his scholarly output. 67 Here al-Wahidi states
that he has divided and collected the exegetical material into three groups (majmuat): rst,
that based on philological understanding, or what he calls meanings (maani al-tafsir);
second, material inherited from the early generations or which has come to be accepted
because it is based on hadith methodology (musnad al-tafsir); and third, paraphrastic or
abridged material (mukhtasar al-tafsir). These are to be understood as three different methods
of exegesis, the result of three different hermeneutical approaches, and not, as Ahlwardt and
the modern Arab editors took them, as titles of lost exegetical works. 68 The majmuat (collections) are les which contain his notes on tafsir and are quite apart from his books; they
are, of course, not available. 69 There is a correspondence between these categories and his
books: al-Basit is for maani, al-Wajiz for abridged material, and al-Wasit for musnad
material. It is testimony to the medieval scribal tradition and its encyclopedic knowledge that
it gave al-Basit the title Jami [or Jami] al-maani, an epithet inspired by this paragraph.
What al-Wahidi does not tell his readers is that at a certain moment in his life, when he
was young and less inhibited, he had refused to include inherited material (musnad al-tafsir)
66. The earliest and most comprehensive list of al-Wahidis works was compiled by his student al-Farisi and is
preserved by Yaqut. Ten works are given there: (1) al-Wajiz, (2) al-Wasit, (3) al-Basit (all Quran commentaries, we
are told), (4) Asbab al-nuzul, (5) al-Daawat wa-al-mahsul, (6) al-Maghazi, (7) Sharh al-Mutanabbi, (8) al-Ighrab
fi al-irab wa-al-nahw, (9) Tafsir al-nabi, (10) Nafy al-tahrif an al-Quran al-sharif (Mujam al-udaba, 12: 259).
Ibn Qadi Shuhbah gives the title of number 9 as Tafsir asma al-nabi, Tabaqat al-Shaiyay, ed. Ali Umar (Cairo:
Maktabat al-Thaqafah al-Diniyah, 1990), 1: 239, as does Ibn Khallikan (Wafayat, 3: 303). Since the earliest list does
not group number 9 with the three commentaries I am inclined to take the title as given by Ibn Qadi Shuhbah as the
most likely.
67. The paragraph states: Before (writing) this bookwith Gods aid and helpI had compiled three compendia [majmuat] on this science [exegesis]: the meanings of tafsir [maani al-tafsir], inherited materials [musnad
al-tafsir], and paraphrastic materials [mukhtasar al-tafsir]. Earlier I had been asked to compose a medium-sized
[wasit] commentary, smaller than al-Basit (which is an extensive discourse) but more detailed than al-Wajiz, whose
discourse is extremely brief. Al-Wasit, 1: 50; emended according to al-Zafitis edition, 1: 6 (text).
68. Ahlwardt, Verzeichniss, 1: 299, a mistake copied by Sellheim. Editors in the Arab world take the categorization as referring to actual titles of exegetical works, and therefore claim that al-Wahidi wrote three works with
the titles Maani al-tafsir, Musnad al-tafsir, and Mukhtasar al-tafsir. The rst to introduce this confusion was
Saqr, in his introduction to Asbab, 18. Al-Mahdi also understood these terms as titles; see al-Wahidi, 92.
69. Those who insist on reading this paragraph as al-Wahidis reference to published works must explain why
none of these works has survived, why no medieval author mentioned any of them, and why they are not part of the
book list his student al-Farisi furnished. There is no shred of evidence for the existence of any other commentary
besides the three that we have.
14
in his published writings if it did not withstand the tests of philology. Thus this paragraph
must be understood as an attempt to rectify his earlier decision to neglect a certain part of
the exegetical material, and to claim that his intention was always to produce three types of
works reecting three types of exegesis. Al-Wahidi is thus trying to understand and to harmonize his own intellectual career for both himself and his readers. He no longer claims that
unsound interpretations of the Quran are to be rejected as belonging to a different order of
interpretation, nor as corrupt statements (al-aqwal al-fasidah) and base interpretations (altafsir al-mardhul ). 70 The impatience of al-Wahidis youth is all but gone. One must then
acknowledge that the current assessment of al-Wahidi by modern Muslim scholars, who
use his later production to assess his whole career, is not their own invention so much as
al-Wahidis self-assessment at the end of his career. A reader of al-Wasit or Asbab nuzul
al-Quran would hardly suspect that the author of these highly conservative works also
wrote a scathing critique of non-philological readings.
Having examined al-Wahidis own characterization of his intellectual output, I shall now
give a preliminary assessment of his extant works.
1. Al-Basit (The Large Commentary). This is al-Wahidis magnum opus and a masterpiece of the Islamic exegetical tradition. Begun soon after 427/1035, it was nished nineteen
years later, as its colophon indicates (contrary to Sellheims speculation that it was not
completed; cf. n. 39). I have collected three different copies of the last volume of this work
which include transcriptions of the original colophon. Another complete copy, Nuruosmaniye
nos. 236240, written by a single scribe, consists of ve large volumes of around 1700 folios.
(This copy was discovered by Shihab Ahmad of Harvard University.) Likewise, al-Azhars
copy was originally in ve volumes, but is now missing the second volume. Medieval biographical dictionaries speak of a sixteen-volume division of the work. 71 The only copy to
reect this division is the Sana copy; unfortunately only three volumes of this magnicent
copy survive. 72 Volumes of this commentary are also available in the libraries of Cairo,
Basra, Damascus, Dublin, Istanbul, Rampur, and Rome.
Al-Wahidis introduction to al-Basit, and his colophon, are important documents both for
their elucidation of his early hermeneutical approach and for the information they give about
his life and education. Al-Basit represents the rst attempt in tafsir to overcome the crisis
facing Quranic exegesis by charting a more thorough philological reading; it is the rst explicit refusal of the mainstream solution, the encyclopedic approach pioneered by al-Tabari
and perfected and popularized by al-Thalabi. Another aim is to give a consistently Asharite
reading of the Qurans theology against the Mutazilite interpretation, a major goal of the
Nishapuri school. Al-Razis kalamization (for want of a better word) of tafsir was a direct
continuation of what al-Thalabi and al-Wahidi pioneered.
70. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, f. 7b.
71. Ibn Qadi Shuhbah, Tabaqat al-Shaiyah, 1: 239. Brockelmann (GAS, 1: 412) states that the work was in 17
volumes; the only possible source of this information is the wrongly attributed manuscript in Caetanis collection
(Caet. Ms. 78b), which is not an al-Basit volume as the catalogue claims. The cataloguer was misguided by the title
given for this manuscript, which is not correct, nor is it the original title of the volume. On inspecting the manuscript
it became clear that it belongs to a later work, as the author quotes extensively from al-Zamakhshari (d. 538/1144).
The colophon of this manuscript (which neither mentions that it is by al-Wahidi nor gives the title) states that the
next volume is the seventeenth and last. Brockelmann inspected the manuscript and took the attribution at face value.
For a brief description of the manuscript, see G. Gabrieli, La Fondazione Caetani per gli studi Musulmani (Rome:
Accadmia dei Lincei, 1926), 38, no. 78b.
72. Two are housed in Yemen (Sanaa manuscripts, Maktabat al-Jami al-Kabir, tafsir nos. 51, 54), while the
third is in Rome (Caet. ms. 78a).
One Line Long
15
Jawdat al-Mahdi is the only modern scholar to study al-Basit as part of his general
analysis of al-Wahidis hermeneutics. However, he misses the signicance of this work
by refusing to see its radical position vis--vis the previous exegetical tradition. Al-Mahdi
presents a synchronic analysis of al-Wahidis literary corpus without admitting or entertaining the idea that this output might have been contradictory and occasioned by different
concerns at different times in the authors life (although he was the rst to offer an interpretation of al-Wahidis career). Al-Wahidi is presented as the perfect Sunni commentator
who followed the paradigm of Ibn Taymiyah even before Ibn Taymiyah! He overlooks or
omits the crucial paragraph in al-Wahidis introduction; 73 while quoting it in full, he never
hints at al-Wahidis attack on non-philological interpretations. 74
I have been collecting copies of manuscripts of al-Basit in preparation for a critical
edition, in the hope that this will help to elucidate the history of the medieval exegetical
tradition. It is an immense work and is difcult to characterize fully; more time is needed
to describe its inner workings. Since it took almost two decades to complete, the question of
inner development must be addressed, especially in view of al-Wahidis constant intellectual
struggle regarding the best method of exegesis.
2. Al-Wasit (The Middle Commentary). Conceived sometime during the writing of alBasit, this work represents al-Wahidis return to the fold of the classical method and its
catholic hermeneutical approach to the Quran which his master al-Thalabi had perfected.
The material rejected from al-Basit forms the center of this work. The rst reference to
al-Wasit that I have found comes at the end of al-Basit, 75 where al-Wahidi refers the reader
to another Quran commentary containing material omitted from the current work; thus
sometime before nishing al-Basit, al-Wahidi must have begun work on al-Wasit, collecting
material that did not make it into al-Basit because it was deemed non-philological. Al-Wasit
is thus a compilation of reconciliation. The title itself can be read as a pun, both as the
middle and the go-between. Yet one can argue that the reconciliation is half-hearted, or
at least a botched attempt to correct a previous position; al-Wahidi simply relegated musnad
material to this work, and thus made clear what he had left out of al-Basit. His refusal to
follow the encyclopedic approach is itself a statement; his separation of different ways of
doing tafsir in different works undermined the encyclopedic solution that the Sunni traditionparticularly the practice of his teacher al-Thalabidevised to save the coherency of
the meaning of the Quran.
Al-Wasit enjoyed widespread popularity among the medieval scholarly community. In
less than two hundred years the manuscripts of this work had become so multiplied (and so
corrupted) that one scholar, Ismail b. Muhammad al-Hadrami (d. 677/1278), undertook to
correct the copyists mistakes in their transmission of the work. He wrote a sort of critical
apparatus in the form of a book, 76 an honor not usually accorded to tafsir works. (For recent
critical editions of al-Wasit, see n. 12; the introduction and the interpretation of Sura 1 have
73. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 7b line 11.

74. Al-Mahdi quotes the introduction to al-Basit in al-Wahidi, 7072, 76, 20910, 25254.
75. Al-Wahidi refers the reader to a lengthy story about the people mentioned in Sura 85 in his musnad altafsir (al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 240, f. 457b). This story, related on the authority of Suhayb, is recorded in
al-Wasit (4: 45960). This shows that al-Wahidi considered al-Wasit to be the commentary concerned with musnad
material.
76. Al-Hadrami, Umdat al-qawi wa-al-daif lima waqaa Wasit al-Wahidi min al-tabdil wa-al-tahrif, Cairo,
Dar al-Kutub, tafsir 159. For details on al-Hadrami and his work, see al-Mahdi, al-Wahidi, 8889, where he corrects
Brockelmanns mischaracterization of this work. See also al-Zafitis introduction to al-Wasit, 1: 45.
16
also been edited separately. 77) It is unfortunate that the editors of al-Wasit did not use the
incomplete copy of the work in Berlin (Spr. 415, Spr. 416). The signicance of this copy is
that it has a riwayat sama (or chain of transmission), from the author to the scribe.
3. Al-Wajiz (The Short Commentary). Al-Wajiz is the rst medieval short commentary
on the Quran; it was explicitly written in response to popular demand for a handy work.
Al-Wahidi was conscious of writing something new. 78 Al-Ghazalis decision to highlight
the aptness of the length of this work also points to the scarcity, if not absence, of any
such commentary. 79 Al-Wahidi was thus an innovator. The aim of the work is to present a
mono-valent reading of the Quran, depending on Ibn Abbass traditions or on those of
others of his rank. In the case of a difcult word, which presumably would not have an interpretation from these early authorities, it also aims to supply a gloss. 80
4. Asbab nuzul al-Quran (Occasions of Revelation). Asbab nuzul al-Quran is the last
of al-Wahidis works that has reached us. Undoubtedly this is the most popular, and also the
most hermeneutically conservative, of his works. 81 Rarely does a year pass without a new
printing. These are either plagiarized reprints of the critical edition of al-Sayyid Ahmad Saqr,
without the critical apparatus, or reprints of al-Babi al-Halabi and other early Egyptian
printings. 82
The signicance of this work lies in its staunchly conservative introduction. Al-Wahidi
is adamant that the information about when and where and why a verse was revealed is not
a matter for speculation but of received knowledge. 83 One is not supposed to offer guesses
or opinions on this matter. The bellicose tone is problematic; I take it to indicate al-Wahidis
ambivalence towards his earlier approach. Yet a conservative al-Wahidi does not imply a
humble soul. He informs us that this work was meant for students and dilettantes who need
a sort of elementary tafsir, in which an approach involving narrative and historical contextualization is used to guide them. He laments that he is forced to write such works for
beginners since all efforts to raise the level of interest in the sciences of the Quran have
been of no avail. 84 But the signicance of Asbab nuzul al-Quran should not be overlooked; it was the rst work of its kind that both popularized this form of tafsir and gave
the genre a model to emulate. 85
5. Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi. Al-Wahidis Sharh Diwan al-Mutanabbi is considered
the nest of the commentaries on this poet; 86 this assessment is hard to refute, for com-
77. Mahdi Jasim and Nuhad Salih, Tafsir al-Wasit bayn al-Wajiz wa-al-Basit . . . al-Muqaddimah wa-alfatihah, al-Mawrid 17: 4 (1988), 29230.
78. Al-Wajiz, 1: 87.
79. See n. 2. I am discounting the Quran commentary of Ibn Abbas since it did not comment on all of the
Quran. See Andrew Rippin, Tafsir Ibn Abbas and Criteria for Dating Early tafsir Texts, JSAI 29 (1994): 3883.
80. Al-Wajiz, 1: 87.
81. The conservative hermeneutics of this work foreshadows Ibn Taymiyahs polemical manifesto Muqaddimah fi usul al-tafsir. For an assessment of Ibn Taymiyahs work, see Formation, 21527.
82. Asbab, ed. Saqr (see n. 15). A recent reprinting of this work was issued by Kamal Zaghlul (Beirut: Dar alKutub al-Ilmiyah, 2001). To his credit, Zaghlul is explicit about using Saqrs edition as the basis of his reprint.
83. Asbab, ed. Saqr, 56.
84. Ibid., 4.
85. See Andrew Rippin, The Exegetical Genre asbab al-nuzul: A Bibliographical and Terminological Survey,
BSOAS 48 (1985): 45, 15.
86. Hajji Khalifah, Kashf al-zunun, 1: 809.
One Line Long
17
mentators on al-Mutanabbi include the poet Abu al-Ala al-Maarri (d. 449/1058), the philologist (and the poets student) Ibn Jinni (d. 392/1002), and a host of other illustrious names.
Remarkably, there are no studies on this work. It is regrettable that Ihsan Abbas did not
discuss this work in his study of Arabic literary criticism (see n. 15). It was rst edited by
F. Dieterici in 1861 (see n. 19), and this edition has been reprinted repeatedly in the Arab
world. The work permits a reconstruction of a list of works of poetry read by al-Wahidi.
The question remains as to why al-Wahidi, who spent his life commenting on the Quran,
decided to write a work of literary criticism so late in his career. In the introduction to his
commentary, he recalls his early days, when he was the unsurpassed master of the art of
prosody. The main reason he gives for writing the work is that there was no satisfactory commentary on al-Mutanabbi that merited reading. 87 I still believe that al-Wahidis great love
was poetry; unable to create it, he was unable to be far from it.
v. an example of al-wAHidIs hermeneutical approach

Here I will give an example of al-Wahidis approach to the Quran from al-Basit, compare
it to that of other exegetes, and compare how he dealt with the same verse in al-Wasit and
al-Wajiz. The example is only crudely illustrative, but it will underline the importance of
discarding the notion that medieval exegetes were mere copiers of one another without distinctive, or even radically different, methods of interpreting the Quran. The idea that this
massive literature was motivated by mere compulsive copying, and not by profound intellectual concerns, is untenable. The development of philology meant that the exegetes were
always at one remove from a theological catastrophe should they allow philology to dominate. There is a tension through the tafsir enterprise whose source is the ever-ominous
ability of philology to dismantle suspicious readings at any moment.
Quran 93:7Did he not nd you [Muhammad] unguided [or astray; dallan] and guide
you?has presented problems to exegetes by raising the issue of Muhammads religious
background before he became a prophet. 88 How exegetes responded to this verse may be the
litmus test of their willingness to allow the language of the Quran to hint at possibilities
not sanctioned by Sunni theology, which had moved to sanctify Muhammad and ascribe infallibility to his life and deeds. I have discussed elsewhere how al-Tabari, al-Thalabi, and alZamakhshari dealt with this verse, and will here simply compare how al-Wahidis approach
differs. 89 The need to compare exegetes stems from the fact that tafsir is a genealogical literature, and must be studied in a synoptic fashion; in order to understand fully what a certain
exegete was doing we must compare him to previous exegetes who inuenced him, as well
as to those who came after him. This type of synoptic study allows us to go beyond the
impression of repetitiveness that many readers experience when dealing with tafsir, an impression that has impeded the scholarly appreciation of the richness of this genre and the
awareness of its hermeneutical complexity.
Al-Tabari and al-Thalabi, despite their markedly different approaches to the verse, skirt
the basic issue: what was the nature of Muhammads belief before his prophecy? They
refuse to address the question of Muhammads pagan background. Though both are aware of
the problematic word dallan, they never confront it head on. Indeed, one can document a
trend to distance Muhammad from any taint of pre-Islamic religious afliations. Despite the
87. Carmina Muntanabbi, 24.

88. Uri Rubin has discussed this verse, and its interpretations, at length; see Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder:
The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995), 9099.
18
fact that both quote al-Suddis famous interpretation of this versethat Muhammad was
on the affair [or: followed the religion] of his people for forty yearsthey refuse to tell us
what this means.
Al-Zamakhshari offers what has become the standard Sunni understanding of this verse:
Muhammad was ignorant of the science of divine law (ilm al-shariah) and that which
is based on received knowledge (sama) before his prophecy. This interpretation appears
to fully disclose the meaning of dallan, but in fact merely asserts historical truth about
Muhammad that is not in dispute: He could not have been aware of the laws and revelation
before they were dispensed to him by God. Nothing is said about his belief in one God or
many before receiving revelation. After summarizing the stories related by al-Thalabi that
tell of episodes in which Muhammad was supposedly lost, al-Zamakhshari moves on to the
crux of the matter: al-Suddis (d. 127/745) phrase that Muhammad was on the affair of
his tribe for forty years.
[For] those who stated that Muhammad was on the affair of his tribe for forty years, and mean
that Muhammad was oblivious to revealed sciences (ulum al-samiyah), as his people were, then
this interpretation is valid; but if they mean that he was a follower of his tribes religion and a
pagan like them, then this is absolutely wrong (literally: God forbid!). For prophets should be
infallible and free of sin before and after their call to prophecy, whether of minor or major sins
let alone the possibility of a prophet being an unbeliever (kar) and ignorant of God. It would be
a fatal disadvantage for a prophet to have been a pagan since this would undermine his position
with the pagans when disagreeing with them. 90
Here we have an interpretation of an interpretation performed in order to preserve the sanctity

and integrity of the doctrine of Muhammads infallibility. Not only did al-Zamakhshari not
discuss al-Suddis interpretation; he mentions it only to refute it. Since a would-be prophet
cannot be ignorant of the Creator, any verse in the Quran that points to the contrary must
mean something else, regardless of what is actually says.
How does al-Wahidi interpret this verse in al-Basit? I offer a full translation of his interpretation before discussing its main features:
Ibn Abbas said: God found you straying from prophecy (dallan an al-nubuwwah) and He
guided you through prophecy to the best of religions and the most benevolent. Al-Hasan and alDahhak said: God found you lost from the post-signs of prophecy and the rules of divine law,
unaware of them and he guided you to them. This is supported by His statements And before
it (the Quran) you were one of the heedless [12:3] and You (Muhammad) did not know what
the Book is nor faith [42:52]. These interpretations are the opinions (madhhab) of the theologians (arbab al-usul) and the scholars of our camp (ulama ashabina); they believe that the
Prophet, peace be upon him, was never an unbeliever (kar). Abu Ishaq [al-Zajjaj; d. 311/923]
opted for this opinion and stated that Muhammad did not know the Quran or the divine law
and was guided by God to the Quran and the laws of Islam. We have already discussed these
matters when we dealt with Gods statement, You did not know what the Book is or what faith
is [42:52].
Some exegetes, however, opted to choose the literal (or apparent) meaning of the verse (zahir
al-ayah). Thus al-Kalbi stated: He found you unguided, that is, an unbeliever (kar) among
unbelievers, and He guided you to monotheism. Al-Suddi said: He (Muhammad) was on the
affair of his tribe for forty years. Mujahid said: He found you unguided, that is unguided from
guidance (huda) and He guided you to His religion.
90. Al-Zamakhshari, al-Kashshaf (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1972), 4: 265.
19
People of our camp state that the meaning of this verse is elucidated and corrected through received knowledge (yustadrak bi-al-sama). Yet reason (aql) does allow the possibility that an
individual who is an unbeliever may be blessed by God by bestowing on him faith and honoring
him with prophecy. It is also possible rationally that someone who is already a prophet might be
divested of this rank. 91
First, it is important to emphasize that al-Wahidi preserved early material, like the quotation from al-Kalbi, that was either expurgated or simply never reported by earlier exegetes.
This is rather surprising, given al-Wahidis late date; but scholars working on tafsir should
be prepared for surprises, given the colossal amount of material still unexamined. Late
materialand one has in mind here the medieval glosses (hawashi) on the classical commentariesmight contain quotations from early sources not preserved elsewhere. Second,
al-Wahidi admitted that the apparent meaning (zahir al-ayah), i.e., the philological meaning
of the verse is that before his call to prophecy Muhammad was a pagan, a kar. More important is that al-Wahidi violated a religious taboo by reporting that some exegetes believed
that Muhammad was an unbeliever, and reported their opinion without recourse to euphemisms or showing any evident embarrassment. Further, al-Wahidi has to admit that for the
mainstream Sunni position to hold, or, as he bluntly puts it, for this verse to mean what it
does not mean, one may only have recourse to received knowledge (sama), which overrides even scripture. Finally, he mentions reason (aql) and what is possible and not possible
according to rational thought. By contrast, the Mutazilite exegete al-Zamakhshari not only
failed to admit the apparent meaning of the verse, but disputed it, to say nothing of his not
mentioning reason in connection with what sort of individual a prophet could or could not be.
One would hardly expect a Sunni exegete who never tires of attacking Mutazilite dogma to
admit to rational possibilities contrary to his own position. (It should be kept in mind that
one of al-Wahidis main aims in al-Basit was to attack systematically that Mutazilite understanding of the Quran, and to present a coherently Asharite understanding.) Perhaps we have
schematized Islamic intellectual history to the degree that we have lost sight of the nuances
that characterize any complex intellectual tradition. Taking the interpretation of this verse
alone, one could easily surmise that al-Zamakhshari was a staunch Sunni, al-Wahidi a calm
Mutazilite.
The discussion of Quran 93:7 as presented by al-Wahidi is thus centered on the admission
that its manifest or apparent meaning contradicts the Sunni understanding. Sunni Asharite
scholars were willing to concede that reason does not hold the supreme position in their
system; but to admit that the apparent or literal meaning of the Quran contradicted Sunni
dogma, without some safeguards, seems rather dangerous. Al-Wahidi, an Asharite, simply
admits this fact. Thus, rather than performing unsound philological maneuvers to get rid of
the problem, he boldly asserts that Sunni theologians have stated that received knowledge
overrides the literal meaning of the verse. Al-Wahidi is the only Sunni exegete I know of who
reports that there were Sunni theologians who tackled the challenge posed by a philological
reading of the Quran to the Sunni understanding of what it means by placing explicit limitations on philology, despite the hitherto declared consensus among Sunni exegetes that philology is the enshrined tool for understanding the Quran. In this sense al-Basit is an ironic
text; for while its declared intention is to read the Quran philologically, it ends up admitting,
at least in what I call theological melting loci, that the tool of philology does not enjoy unlimited authority.
91. Al-Basit, Riwaq al-Magharibah 303/5, f. 192a.
20
The genealogical nature of tafsir and the synoptic study of its history allow the investigator an opportunity to examine material which certain exegetes opted to omit. For certain
exegetes we can postulate a direct lineage of inuencesay a teacher-student lineage, as is
the case with the Nishapur schoolwhich permits us to make arguments from silence. We
know that al-Wahidi read and studied al-Thalabis work with the author, and transmitted his
Quran commentary to posterity. 92 We are thus in the position of being able to make conclusions based on the omissions and exclusions in al-Wahidis own work. In the case of
Quran 93:7 he opted to discard the pseudo-philological and mystical interpretations supposed by al-Thalabi. Thus he reported no episodes in which Muhammad was physically
lost and gave no mystical interpretation. This is not surprising, since in his introduction
to al-Basit al-Wahidi makes clear that he will not bother with interpretations that cannot be
defended by using philological methods. It is in this light that we have to understand the
resignation in al-Wahidis tone regarding al-Zajjajs acceptance of the Sunni interpretation of
this verse. To al-Wahidi, al-Zajjaj was the paragon of the philological method, which meant
refusing overt theological interpretations when manifestly wrong; hence his surprise regarding al-Zajjajs position on this verse. Moreover, his disparaging attitude toward mystical interpretation is well known, as I have mentioned.
The intricacy of al-Wahidis interpretation can only be made meaningful through a total
dismantling of the history of Quranic exegesis and a close examination of the assumptions
from which he was escaping and by which he nevertheless remained shackled. His position
toward the Quran in al-Basit would place him apart from the mainstream Sunni attempt
to reconcile different hermeneutical approaches in fashion in each of the various currents
of Sunnism. The integrative approach pioneered by al-Tabari and enlarged by al-Thalabi was
devised to allow exegetes the maximum possible space for both defending Sunnism and
making it mainstream. Exegetes drew upon most of the available disciplines, both to normalize tafsir and to make Sunnism more palatable to the intellectuals. Thus the compromise
that Sunnism offered in the classical form of tafsir was overturned in al-Basit. Al-Wahidis
insistence that philology can and should act as a judge of the validity of inherited interpretations forced others to accuse him of showing contempt and disrespect to earlier authorities.
But al-Wahidi ameliorated his position as he matured, for in al-Wasit he gave the musnad, or
traditional material, the dominant, if not the only, voice. His interpretation of Quran 93:7
in al-Wasit is as follows:
He found you lost from the post-signs of prophecy and the rules of divine law, unaware of them,
and He guided you to them. This is supported by His statement, And before it (the Quran) you
were one of the heedless [12:3], and His statement You (Muhammad) did not know what the
Book is nor faith [42:52]. Al-Zajjaj opted for this opinion and stated that Muhammad did
not know the Quran or the divine law and was guided by God to the Quran and the laws of
Islam. 93
It is clear that al-Wahidi has dropped the minority positionthe possibility of Muhammads polytheist pastand presented what one might call a reformed Sunni interpretation. It is true that he was hiding behind al-Zajjajs endorsement, but this is hardly
convincing; in al-Basit philology was the authority and not al-Zajjaj, dear as he was to alWahidi. Al-Wasit was thus not an epitome of al-Basit, despite the fact that the paragraph
quoted above is culled from al-Basit. This is also an example of the paradox of the genre
93. Al-Wait, 4: 511.
21
of tafsir: the same statement about al-Zajjajs position has two different meanings because of
the context. In the tafsir context it is what tells us what an author was trying to say and not
merely what he was saying, another reason why a synoptic study of tafsir is obligatory. The
interpretation of 93:7 in al-Wajiz is, as expected, shorter; it simply consists of the rst three
lines quoted above. 94 If we take al-Wahidis position in al-Wajiz as representing his understanding of how this verse should be understood, since he wrote al-Wajiz before nishing
any of his other commentaries, we have to admire his intellectual integrity, for he remained
faithful to the principles of the introduction to al-Basit and presented a philological reading
of 93:7, despite his change of heart. Al-Wahidis continuous output in tafsir reects his hesitation as to the doctrinal validity of his initial solution: that philology is the only yardstick
for tafsir. In this sense one could speak of the agony caused by grammar and the triumph
of piety in al-Wahidis later life. His output in tafsir cannot be read as the reection of one
position vis--vis the Quran, but as the result of a continuous struggle to solve the problem
that philology posed to the Sunni understanding of it.
conclusion
The survival of a substantial number of al-Wahidis works offers us a unique opportunity
to study the intellectual formation of this medieval commentator and allows us to reconstruct
his hermeneutical theories. It is rare that we have access to such a varied output on tafsir by
a single author. This article has laid the foundation for further investigation into his works.
It should also be evident that any study of this exegete must incorporate his commentary on
al-Mutanabbi. The relationship between Quranic commentary and literary commentary has
so far been little studied, a rather unfortunate omission since philology was the dominant
form of discourse among the elite of medieval Islamic culture.
The poignancy of al-Wahidis life is that it started with a failed attempt to write poetry
and ended instead with a commentary on the most admired of Arabic poets. There is also an
irony in his scholarly life: he was caught in the classicism of high Arabic culture at a period
when the cultural landscape was changing dramatically. Poetic creativity was moving away
from an engagement with pre-Islamic and early Islamic modes to one with mysticism. Moreover, al-Wahidis compatriots in eastern Iran had begun using the Persian language to write
poetry. He was one of the last holdouts in a culturally transformed landscape. His radical
attempt at reforming tafsir was itself thwarted by his later conversion to the method of his
teacher. His inuence on the later exegetical tradition was, however, profound. He should be
considered one of the major intellectual gures of medieval Islam, and his output is worthy
of a more sustained analysis than has been the case so far.
94. NO TEXT FOR NOTE 94.

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The Last of the Nishapuri School of Tafsir:

Al-Wahidi (d. 468/1076) and His Signicance

Journal of the American Oriental Society 126.2 (2006)

Journal of the American Oriental Society 126.2 (2006)

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ii. al-wAHidI, the nishapuri school,

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16. See Formation, 122.

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iii. al-wAHidIs biography

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 126.2 (2006)

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I have used my own edition of this introduction (see n. 30).

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iv. al-wAHidIs works

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A. Al-Wahidis Extant Works

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73. Al-Basit, Nuruosmaniye, tafsir 236, fol. 7b line 11.

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v. an example of al-wAHidIs hermeneutical approach

87. Carmina Muntanabbi, 24.

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Here we have an interpretation of an interpretation performed in order to preserve the sanctity

90. Al-Zamakhshari, al-Kashshaf (Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1972), 4: 265.

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91. Al-Basit, Riwaq al-Magharibah 303/5, f. 192a.

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