أثر منهج الفراهي في تفسير "تدبر القرآن" لتلميذه الإصلاحي: سورة الطور نموذجا

The Impact of al-Farahī’s Method on His Student Amīn Aḥsan Iṣlāḥī in Tadabbur al-Qurʾān: Sūrat al-Ṭūr as a Case Study

Abstract

Classical Qurʾanic exegesis was predominantly characterized by an analytical, verse-by-verse approach. Although some early exegetes addressed relationships between verses and passages, sustained attention to the coherence of an entire surah—what contemporary scholarship often describes as the surah’s thematic unity—received limited systematic treatment. Among modern reformulations of this concern, ʿAllāmah ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Farahī (d. 1931) developed the concept of nizām al-Qurʾān, arguing that each surah possesses an organizing theme, which he termed the ʿamūd al-surah (the surah’s central axis). While al-Farahī did not apply this method comprehensively across the Qurʾan, his student Amīn Aḥsan Iṣlāḥī (d. 1997) adopted and extended it in his major Urdu tafsīr, Tadabbur al-Qurʾān. This study seeks to introduce Iṣlāḥī’s exegetical project to an Arabic-speaking readership and to assess the extent to which Tadabbur al-Qurʾān represents a continuation of al-Farahī’s methodological foundations. It examines how Iṣlāḥī built upon al-Farahī’s principles, while also identifying points of convergence and divergence between teacher and student. Methodologically, the study employs a descriptive approach to present al-Farahī’s and Iṣlāḥī’s works and interpretive frameworks, and an analytical approach to evaluate Iṣlāḥī’s reading of Sūrat al-Ṭūr as a representative sample of his application of nazm (textual structure and coherence). The study finds that Iṣlāḥī’s tafsīr extends al-Farahī’s emphasis on internal Qurʾanic resources i.e., language, surah structure, and interpreting the Qurʾan by the Qurʾan together with close attention to Qurʾanic vocabulary. It also notes that, in continuity with al-Farahī, Iṣlāḥī makes comparatively limited use of external sources such as hadith, historical reports, and earlier scriptures. While al-Farahī’s dense, technical style and Iṣlāḥī’s clearer, more accessible prose differs in presentation, both contribute to clarifying surah coherence and the central theme. Finally, the study recommends incorporating variant readings (qiraʾat) as a complementary tool for identifying structural relations and thematic axes within a surah, noting that neither al-Farahī nor Iṣlāḥī appears to employ qiraʾat systematically for this purpose.