ABSTRACT

While the storytellers entertained the believers around the mosques and the converts were consulted for their superior knowledge of the Biblical stories, the Muslims who read and studied the Qurʾān immediately felt a growing need to clarify for themselves the obscure parts and to fill in the missing elements of the sacred text. It does not seem as though the first generations of Muslims felt this need with the same intensity. The later sources refer to a certain opposition regarding Qurʾānic exegesis in the course of the first decades of Islam, but, in any case, if in fact this opposition really existed, it was limited in time and probably due to the excessive scruples of certain isolated groups. On the other hand there are many contrasting indications which attribute the first exegetical explanations to Muḥammad himself, or which mention those companions who dedicated themselves to this discipline and became, as in the case of Ibn ʿAbbās, widely respected experts and secure points of reference for generations of exegetes of the later centuries. This first exegetical activity, such as that of the storytellers and the converts, probably went through a first stage which was principally oral and only later became fixed, in different ways, in written works. 1