An Analysis of Hermeneutic Reading of Nasr Hamed Abu Zayd of Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani’s Thoughts

Retrospective analysis of Islamic thought reflects thinkers’ focus on religious texts through various approaches. This has led to the establishment of various sciences based on religious approach hence influencing common science. This mutual effect in the realm of thought, specially in rhetoric prepared the ground for many developments. Some of the contemporary new Arab thinkers including Nasr Hamed Abu Zayd (1943) studied the rhetorical thought of Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani (471 AH) by hermeneutic theories. Regarding the importance of understanding Jurjani’s thought pattern and Abu Zayd’s use of his ideas by new thinking-critical approaches, the present study attempts to exploit Abu Zayd’s documentations of Jurjani’s thoughts, analyzes the thought roots and the reading of these ideas in his view through qualitative approach and inductive method. The study yielded the results that Nasr Hamed uses a critical approach and two method -referring to the thinker’s ideas and hermeneutical relativism- to analyze the Islamic legacy. By Jurjani’s reading and changing his thinking method to understand his content, Nasr Hamed considers him a pioneer of relativism in Arabian culture. By associating elements like reader-response criticism, death of the author, negation of denotative meaning and negation of entailment in phrases containing figurative meaning, frequency of reading, frequency of author and parity of inimitability with fusion of horizons in Jurjani’s thought, Nasr Hamed considers him a trendsetter of a critical approach in the Arabian contemporary thought realm.