ABSTRACT
The decades after 1857 saw an intensification of many historical processes that were steadily in the offing from the late eighteenth century, a subject that this chapter studies in detail. A clear impact on Muslim Qur’anic thought was visible in these specific contexts. One notes in particular a number of such processes, such as the acceleration of print technology in British India; the growth of Muslim sectarian polemics as represented around ideas of orthodoxy; Muslim-Christian disputes in which the Qur’an and the Bible constituted the ostensible bases for arguments from both sides; the growing work of Europeans, in their different identities, on studying the Qur’an and the career of the Prophet Muḥammad; the development of conflicting epistemologies and visions of education in Muslim contexts; and the crisis of religious authority in the wake of conflicting visions of reform. All these factors had a direct bearing on Muslim understandings of the Qur’an, particularly in terms of the expected role that an “authentic” understanding of the scripture might play on different fronts.
