ABSTRACT
The new “literary” interpretation of the Qur’an by the Egyptian writer Amı-n al-Khu-lı-appeared in the first decades of the twentieth century, a period of great cultural ferment in the Arab-Islamic world.1 This was the time when, alongside the reformist ideas of the Salafi movement, the “secularising” nahda (renaissance) of Arab thought was still important.2 Al-Khu-lı-was a university professor of Arab literature, not a scholar of religious sciences. As such, he cannot be said to have written a “commentary” of the Qur’an. He put forward, instead, a method for studying the Scripture that started from the consideration of it, to all intents and purposes, as a “literary” text. Why such a suggestion should be regarded by the traditionalists as provocative, if not to say downright heretical, requires examination. First, if the Qur’an is to be regarded as a “normal” literary text, its
“inimitability” (i‘ja-z) is compromised. A novel or story does not necessarily maintain the same high qualitative level of expression, rhetoric and composition throughout its length. Since the Qur’an can be compared to a long “story”, it can theoretically be subjected to the same type of critical analysis. Second, and more importantly, if the Qur’an is a “normal” literary text, the commentaries of the traditionalist mufassiru-n, both “medieval” and modern, such as Ta-hir Ibn ‘Ashu-r, can be regarded as highly limited and incomplete or even irrelevant. It is not enough to know merely the how and why of revelation, the biographies of the peoples and prophets mentioned in the Qur’an, its implicit and explicit contents, or to evaluate its elegance and stylistic or grammatical difficulties. The task is, instead, to analyse, in the light of the rhetorical, aesthetic and sociological rules and principles of literature, a text that has been, inevitably, “historicised” and “humanised”. Whatever the case – and this was the most serious accusation directed at al-Khu-lı-and his followers – their approach potentially compromised the divinity and absolute and unchangeable perfection of the sacred text.
