Al-Kashshdf: Al-ZamakhsharT's Mu ()tazilite Exegesis of the Qur'an.

• Author: Laher, Suheil

Al-Kashshdf: Al-ZamakhsharT's Mu ()tazilite Exegesis of the Qur'an. By KlFAYAT ULLAH. Berlin: DE GRUYTER. Pp. x + 259. $91.99, [euro]79.95, [pounds sterling]72.50.

The book under review provides a substantive contribution to the recent surge in scholarship surrounding the Mu'tazili al-Zamakhsharl's (d. 538/J) quranic commentary al-Kashshdf with which the Sunni world has had a love-hate relationship.

The introduction provides a useful brief overview of existing Western scholarship on al-Kashshaf (although I feel that the author could have elaborated more on how his own research is situated relative to these existing works) and an overview of the book's nine chapters. Chapter one contains a wellresearched biographical study of al-Zamakhsharl, drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources that (the author notes) span several centuries. Kifayat Ullah demonstrates a close reading of the sources, including an awareness of variant details--for example, he lists the five different explanations for how al-Zamakhsharl lost one of his feet. Al-Zamakhsharl's teachers, students, travels, and intellectual crisis are all adequately described. A short section on "ZamakhsharT as a Mu'tazilite scholar" appears to be mistakenly titled, and could have been subsumed elsewhere in the chapter.

Chapter two introduces the commentary (tafsTr). The author's synopsis of al-Zamakhsharl's reasons for writing it has a couple of inaccuracies (understandably, given that al-ZamakhsharT's language is sometimes sophisticated to the point of being opaque for many people): al-Zamakhsharl's initially declining to write the book was not due to perceiving himself incapable. Those whom al-ZamakhsharT met on his travels and who were anxious for him to write the tafslr were few, but Ullah should have linked this to al-Zamakhsharl's earlier comments indicating that his tafslr was meant for the upper echelons of the Muslim world, in order to make it clear that the small number of interested people is not a reflection of the quality of his scholarship. Ullah devotes a few pages to discussing the controversy over whether al-ZamakhsharT initially opened his preface with the words, "Praise be to God who created the Quran," but he does not refer to Andrew Lane's 2012 article that contains an analysis of this point ("You Can't Tell a Book by Its Author," BSOAS 75: 47-86). The chapter also contains a chronological catalogue of commentaries and other derivative works of al-Kashshaf which could have been enhanced by noting which ones have been published. Although Ullah seems unaware of Walid Saleh's 2013 article "The...