Forbidding the reading of the Kashshāf: clarifying the Mamluk era reception of Zamakhsharī's Qur'ān commentary.

Abstract

The Qur'ān commentary of Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144), his Kashshāf, gained wide acclaim shortly after being written, and was widely used in research and teaching throughout the Islamic world. This favourable reception was largely due to its new rhetorical insights on how ideas are articulated in the Qur'ān through specific linguistic constructions. The work was also critiqued for its Mu'tazilī content, the work viewed with suspicion for championing - surreptitiously at that - the heterodox interpretations of that theological school. Appraisal and critique formed much of the basis for scholarly engagement with this work in the form of teaching and commentary writing, especially the form of supercommentary writing (ḥawāshī) the Kashshāf initiated. That Mamluk scholarly culture had an overly negative response to the Kashshāf for theological reasons has been vastly overstated in recent scholarship, possibly due to a tendency to view theology as a sufficient impetus driving past intellectual activity. This general portrayal derives from specific Mamluk scholars being depicted as warning against the book, forbidding its study, calling for it to be banned, and undermining or disparaging others for supporting it. This negative reception has also served to justify the transition in the Islamic world to the tafsīr of Bayḍāwī, a work which largely excised the Mu'tazilism of the Kashshāf. This article reconsiders the evidence for an overall negative Mamluk era reception of the Kashshāf, with specific reference to the activities of those scholars whose depiction contributes to an inaccurate portrayal of a crucial moment in tafsīr history, both for the activities of Mamluk era scholars themselves, as well as the subsequent shift to the use of Bayḍāwī.