Quranatura
Subproject 3
Translating Analogism: The Pseudo-Scientific Islamic Exegesis of Ṭanṭāwī Jawharī (d. 1940)
While scholars of modern Islamic exegesis in Egypt have mainly been interested in al-Afghānī (d. 1897), ʿAbduh (d. 1905), and Riḍā (d. 1935), one of their followers, Ṭanṭāwī Jawharī, became the genesis of tafsīr ʿilmī. In his commentary on Q 12, Jawharī wrote of his enthusiasm for “nature and the environment”. In analyzing Jawharī’s early “green” and philosophical reinterpretation of the Qur’an, SP3 will establish a new theoretical perspective on the efforts of Jawharī and Islamic scientific exegesis in general, as well as on the impending need to translate the Qur’an into the modern naturalistic frame of early 20th century Egypt.
SP3 is managed by PI Johanne Louise Christiansen.
Photo: Miniature from a copy of Kitab al-hashaish, an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’s De Materia Medica. ‘An English Catchfly and a Gazelle’. Iraq, Baghdad; 1224. The David Collection.