Introduction / Johanna Pink and Andreas Görke -- Eve in the formative period of Islamic exegesis: intertextual boundaries and hermeneutic demarcations / Catherine Bronson -- Mujāhid's exegesis: origins, paths of transmission and development of a Meccan exegetical tradition in its human, spiritual and theological environment / Claude Gilliot -- The Qurʼanic commentary of Muqātil b. Sulaymān and the evolution of early tafsīr literature / Nicolai Sinai -- Interrelations and boundaries between tafsīr and hadith literature: the exegesis of Mālik b. Anas's Muwaṭṭaʼ and classical Qurʼanic commentaries / Roberto Tottoli -- Shāfiʻī hermeneutics and Qurʼanic interpretation in al-Jāḥiẓ's Kitāb al-ʻUthmāniyya / Ignacio Sánchez -- Tafsīr between law and exegesis: the case of Q. 49-9 (the Rebellion verse/āyat al-baghy) / Rebecca Sauer -- al-Jurjānī: tafsīr theory between linguistics and theological dogma / Nejmeddine Khalfallah -- Interpretation and reasoning in al-Qāḍī ʻAbd al-Jabbār's Qurʼanic hermeneutics / Abdessamad Belhaj -- Tafsīr and the mythology of Islamic fundamentalism / Neguin Yavari -- Where does modernity begin? Muḥammad al-Shawkānī and the tradition of tafsīr / Johanna Pink -- Redefining the borders of tafsīr: oral exegesis, lay exegesis and regional particularities / Andreas Görke -- Tafsīr and the intellectual history of Islam in west Africa: the Nigerian case / Andrea Brigaglia -- Two twentieth-century exegetes between traditional scholarship and modern thought: gender concepts in the tafsīrs of Muḥammad Ḥusayn Ṭabāṭabāʼī and al-Ṭāhir Ibn ʻĀshūr / Kathrin Klausing -- Yaşar Nuri Öztürk: a contemporary Turkish tafsīr theorist / Kathrin Eith -- The contemporary translation of classical works of tafsīr / Andrew Rippin.

How and when did Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir) emerge as a literary genre of its own? To what extent was it influenced by other disciplines, such as law, theology, or philosophy? How did different political or theological agendas shape works of tafsir, and in what ways did the genre develop over time and in different regions? These are some of the major questions which this book seeks to address. This book constitutes the first comprehensive attempt at describing the genre of Qur'anic exegesis in its broader intellectual context. Its aim is to provide a framework for understanding the boundaries of tafsir and its interaction with other disciplines of learning, as well as the subgenres and internal divisions within the genre. It discusses the emergence of the genre in the beginnings of Islamic history and the changes and potential ruptures it has experienced in later times, the role of hadith, law, language, philosophy, theology, and political ideology for the interpretive process, the regional dimension, the influx of modernist ideas and the process of writing tafsir in languages other than Arabic.