The commentary literature written on the Qur’an by the Muslims is a massive literature. It was one of the earliest Islamic literature to be written by early Muslims, and it remained an active genre through the centuries. This literature, however, never became part of a core Islamic disciplines, like law or theology. This ambivalent position of this genre has been the source of its strength and weaknesses. It allowed it to remain unbound by strict disciplinaries rules, and it also escaped scrutiny. The Qur’an was seen as a polyvalent text that supported the various interpretations given to it by exegetes. Nothing seems however to depend on their analysis. The other side of this marginality is that it never received a systematic historical attention. Even to this moment we lack an introduction to the field. This talk is an outline of a history of the genre that I have been writing and finalizing. I will address issues of historiography and of narrative when presenting a discipline.
Image credit: Walid Saleh