The Analysis of Text-Based and Cohesive Approaches of Tunisian Ibn Ashur in His Exegesis: al-Tahrir wa al-Tanwir

Text Linguistics as a new branch of linguistics was taken into consideration to focus on the unit development of the language study from sentence to text level. Along with Coherence, Cohesion is one of the features of texture that belongs to the text itself. In traditional criticism, cohesion was usually exquisite and it did not follow a specific framework. But nowadays, due to the importance of textual approaches, several theories have been proposed to examine the cohesion of literary and non-literary works. The cohesion approach in its primary form at three grammatical, lexical, and junction cohesive levels, explains the cohesive components of the text and the quality of the relationship between the text components at the semantic level and consequently at the superficial level. But the issue is that by exploring the critical heritage of Arabic literature, one can find traces of such approaches in some works, including ibn Ashur’s Tafsir al-tahrirwal’l-Tanwir. In his commentary, Ibn Ash'ur, not accidentally but consciously, has referred to the textual cohesive tools and has considered a level beyond the sentence. Using a descriptive-analytical method, this study tries to analyze IbnAshur approach in his interpretation, based on a text-based perspective and alludes to the role of cohesive elements, which is closely related to the activities of text linguists. The results show that IbnAsh'ur was aware of the importance of cohesion and its application in his interpretation, a