Abstract

Psalmody and calligraphy, two major Islamic arts, tend to emphasize the signifier at the expense of the signified, lending the Koran an aura of myth. Furthermore, the belief in the uncreated nature of the Koran as emanating directly from God further seals it as infinitely unknowable and inimitable. Thinkers such as eleventh-century writer al-Ma'arrī, as well as members of the ninth-century mu'tazila school in Baghdad, challenged this latter notion, a challenge later suppressed. The fruitful tension between aesthetics and exegesis needs to be encouraged by means of fresh interpretations of foundational texts, by reviving the interpretive work of Tabarī (ninth-tenth century) that was suppressed by Ibn al-Kathīr (thirteenth-fourteenth century), whose legacy of oversimplification endures to this day.

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