Gender Hierarchy in the Qur'an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses.

AuthorBerg, Herbert
PositionGender and Muslim Constructions of Exegetical Authority: A Rereading of the Classical Genre of Qur'an Commentary; Tafsir and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre - Book review

Gender Hierarchy in the Qur'an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses. By KAREN BAUER. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. New York: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2015. Pp. xi + 308. $99.99, [pounds sterling]64.99.

Gender and Muslim Constructions of Exegetical Authority: A Rereading of the Classical Genre of Qur'an Commentary. By AISHA GEISSINGER. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 117. Leiden: BRILL, 2015. Pp. xi + 319. $163, [euro]126.

Tafsir and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre. Edited by ANDREAS GORKE and JOHANNA PINK. Qur'anic Studies Series. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, in association with the INSTITUTE OF ISMAILI STUDIES, LONDON, 2014. Pp. xxi + 547. $99.

Despite the bundling here of three volumes on Quranic exegesis that appeared within the space of a year, the field of Tafsir Studies is still in its infancy, as Andreas Gorke and Johanna Pink point out in the introduction to their collection, Tafsir and Islamic Intellectual History. Since the 1990s an increasing number of monographs, collections, and articles devoted to tafsir have appeared. It seems to me that this formative period of Tafsir Studies is analogous to the formative period of tafsir itself. Just as the genre of tafsir gradually emerged and distinguished itself from other early Islamic literary genres, so too the study of the genre is emerging and seeking to define its scope and even the object of its study. Gorke and Pink also note that the field remains fragmented, lacking thus far even a comprehensive history of tafsir. Two key questions remain: what is tafsir and how can it be categorized in a meaningful and analytically useful manner? The two editors frame the former question in terms of boundaries of the genre. Does one include every text (written or oral) that seems to interpret the Quran? Does one include anything the author self-identifies as tafsir? Both methods are problematic given that the first is vague (and unmanageable) and the latter inconsistent. Limiting the study to just those texts with fixed characteristics or by the sources employed likely limits tafsir to texts produced in the fourth/tenth century or later. But even prominent exegetical works would be hard pressed to meet all the characteristics. Gorke and Pink's edited volume therefore wisely seeks to explore the boundaries of the genre and their permeability though a variety of approaches dealing with various epochs, regions, and (possible) subgenres of tafsir, and in so doing to start exploring the characteristics of tafsir, its place in Islamic intellectual history, and its relation to other genres within that history. Although in their respective books Aisha Geissinger and Karen Bauer do not necessarily identify these core issues using the same terminology, both wrestle with the same issues while looking at gender through the lens of tafsir.

In Gender and Muslim Constructions of Exegetical Authority, Geissinger examines the limited but significant exegetical material attributed to female figures. She recognizes that it is impossible to reconstruct early Muslim women's interpretations of the Quran and assiduously avoids historical claims about these female figures. The question Geissinger does explore, however, is what cultural labor gender performed in the making of the classical Sunni tafsir genre and how? Careful not to impose essentialized, ahistorical notions of gender on the premodern exegetes, her analysis begins by demonstrating that socio-political and religious authority was understood in masculine terms and that interpretative authority in particular was emblematically masculine, whereas femaleness encompassed intellectual, physical, and moral deficiency. In her second chapter, Geissinger moves to an examination of women in early exegetical sources, focusing on eight early works and the frequency with which women appear, the literary genre of the material, and the topics of the Quranic verses they explicate. Women are primarily present as objects of male exegetical gaze and later as sources. They have no explicit exegetical role, except when their statements are unwittingly exegetical. She concludes that there is nothing to suggest a discrete body of exegetical materials from women, among whom the Prophet's wives 'A'isha and Umm Salama are the most prominent, and female exegetical activities decrease with time. Turning to the second/eighth- and early third/ninth-century exegesis, she sees this...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT