ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Ibn Taymiyyah has more reason to be open to intertextual study of the Qur’an than we might think. Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Kathir are seen to stand at the origins of the modern Muslim drive to eradicate ambiguity from the text of the Qur’an and endow it with one obvious and unequivocal sense. Ibn Taymiyyah also rejects Isaac as the intended sacrifice. While making no mention of Ka?b, he accuses the People of the Book of adding Isaac’s name into the biblical text. Additionally, Ibn Taymiyyah has to contend in his Muqaddimah with the fact that the Prophet himself authorized transmitting biblical lore in a hadith reported by Bukhari. Roberto Tottoli attributes the twentieth-century attack on israiliyyat to the rationalizing impulses of Islamic modernism and to Muslim reactions against the establishment of the state of Israel and against orientalist scholarship bent on demonstrating Jewish and Christian influence on Islam.
