نشریه پژوهش های قرآنی
سال بیست و پنجم شماره 4 (پیاپی 97، زمستان 1399)

Literary study of the Holy Scriptures, especially the scripture of the Qur’an, means studying it as a sublime, dignified, and effectual literary work, since contrary to the literary works, the Holy Scriptures in the Greek, Hebrew, and other similar traditions are separately woven out of the warp and woof of epic, lyric, and drama. The text of the Qur’an can be studied by two approaches: 1. Religious-epistemic approach, 2. Literary approach. In literary approach the purpose is to find continuity and in religious-epistemic approach to find incontinuity. In literary approach, the inimitability of the text of the Qur'an's being revelatory can be explicitly defended, because the Qur'an explicitly speaks of its own text's inimitability (Al-Baqara, 23; Hūd, 13; Al-Isrā, 88; Al-Ṭūr, 33-34). Obviously, the inimitability is a feature of the literariness of the text, since the addressees of these verses are the deniers of the Qur'an rather than the believers in it.
The present paper consists of the following sections: 1. Theoretical principles of the Qur'an's Poetics, 2. Elucidation of the superiority of the literary approach in examining the text of the Qur'an, 3. Poeticality of the Qur'an's text and some events in the perceptions of the newly converted Muslims, meaning that the Qur'an's religious and epistemic text have greatly enjoyed the poetical features.

The strategy of extension (basṭ) is one of the techniques for quality assessment in Garces' viewpoint, which consists of "explanation, definition, syntactic extension, creative extension, simple extension", incorporated in three levels of semantic-lexical, syntactic, and stylistic and ultimately critically reviews the degree of the positive and negative features representing the competence and acceptability. With an analytical approach of a comparative type, the present research reviews the frequency of various extension techniques in three translations of Fouladvcand, with the centrality of faithfulness; Mujtabavi, with the centrality of communicative and semantic translation; and Saffarzadeh, with the centrality of free translation of Sūras of Al-Naba’, Al-Takwīr, and Al-Muṭaffifīn. Next, with reliance on statistics and charts, the obtained amounts are compared and the amount of the negative and positive addenda is specified in terms of quality and acceptability. The resultant findings indicates that the addenda in semantic and syntactic levels have caused many changes in the stylistic level of the translated text, so much as a considerable percentage is observed in negative competence. According to Garces' model, Mujtabavi's semantic translation enjoys less acceptability in application of the strategy of extension as compared to its highly positive competence; and the competence and acceptability of his translation is higher than the Saffarzadeh's free translation and Fouladvand's faithful translation.

The present paper, while reporting the prohibiting approach and negative complications of allegorical interpretation (ta’wīl), tries to expose for judgment its positive aspects with reliance on religious sources and by inductive method on one hand and analytical method on the other. In the past history of ta’wīl, especially during the early Islamic centuries, the negative perspective on ta’wīl was highly destructive; however, most of those who oppose it have been indispensible to accept it. Given its various types, i.e. the theological/legal and evidential, ta’wīl is more than other types is both employed and criticized. Most of the contemporary exegetical and hadith-expository writings are evidential ta’wīls meaning justification of the external aspects of speech, withdrawal from it, and presenting a meaning other than its external meaning; the use of ta’wīl in Islamic texts does not concern this concept; rather, it concerns objectivity and external evidence. What this writing follows is attending to the legal and evidential ta’wīl while observing the lingual and textual standards.

“Family” is an important and matchless institution consisting of various members and relationships, which provides numerous functions in individual and social levels. One of the subdivisions of family relation is the subsystem of conjugal relations or the relation between spouses as the main pillars for its formation and maintenance described in various verses of the Qur’an. With a conceptual and statistic glance aiming at examining the conjugal relation system in the Qur’an and with a qualitative approach and based on the “content analysis” technique, this research has undertaken to examine all the related verses and extraction of the concepts and categories hidden in them. It is concluded that the conjugal relation in the Qur’an can be described by two great categories of “the ethical principles governing relations” and “the expanse of law and obligations”. The first category consists of 12 concepts and 68 examples and the second comprises of 6 concepts and 48 examples. The conjugal relation system in the Qur’an has been sensitive toward the “gender” index and has presented different models for each one of the spouses.

Presently, the political issues and the tensions created in the world such as the terrorist movements of Al-Qaeda and Taliban and terrorist groups and Daesh (ISIS) have caused Islamophobia and the formation of the doctrine of Jihad to be perceived as being violent. This has in turn prepared the ground for and necessitated studying Jihad and has added to the volume of the research, writings and discourses in this field. The American and European researchers, whose academic approach has in recent decades become dominantly academic, have carried out serious investigations that are strongly required to be analyzed and reviewed. David Cook, an American Islamic researcher whose major works are on Jihad, martyrdom, and the end-of-time discourses, is known to be one the authorities in this regard. In the present paper, it is attempted with a descriptive-analytical method and by means of a critical approach to explore David Cook’s viewpoint. Cook conceives the success and expansion of Islam as indebted to “jihad” and maintains that the Qur’an by expressing the overall principles of war on one hand and the traditions by spiritualizing the concept of jihad and mentioning the details on the other, create the violent doctrine of jihad. The pivotal point of his perspective is that despite the various and complicated development of jihad in interpretation and practice, the concept violence and war are inseparable from the concept of jihad. The present research indicates that Cook’s invocation to the abrogation of the verses of peace and forgiveness is not acceptable. Similarly, his cognition about the nature of jihad is more mingled with a historical outlook and from his point of view; jihad has an aggressive nature and means a war possessing a spiritual value.

The Holy Qur’an has used asbāṭ to refer to a number of Revelation receiving Prophets as well as the twelve Israelite tribes. Arthur Jeffery, who according to his early viewpoint considered the Revelation receiving tribes (asbāṭ) as the twelve Jewish Prophets, also known as Twelve Minor Prophets, has presumed that the Holy Qur’an by using asbāṭ as the twelve Israelite tribes on one hand and mentioning them as the receivers of Revelation on the other, has proclaimed the Minor Prophets to be the same as the twelve Israelite tribes. Later on, by changing his viewpoint concerning the referents of the revelation receiving tribes, he has considered them as referring to Prophet Jacob’s twelve sons. Various reasons and evidences indicate that Arthur Jeffrey’s viewpoint concerning the confusion of the referents of asbāṭ, especially their application to Prophet Jacob’s twelve sons and the Minor Prophets, is incompatible with the Qur’an’s narration and are resulted from his unfamiliarity with the Qur’anic concepts and his impressionability from the Old Testament’s narration. The revelation to the asbāṭ, the necessity of Muslims’ faith in them, mentioning them along with the prophets, and the negation of their being Jewish and Christian on one hand and the Qur’an’s report about the Jacob’s sons treatment of their father and brother Joseph as well as some eminent parts of the paganish and blasphemous history of the Jewish religious life, especially the way they treated their Prophets on the other hand, show that the revelation receiving asbāṭ cannot be the same as the Israelite tribes or the Prophet Joseph’s brothers, as they have separate identities. They included certain elect members from among the descendants of Prophet Jacob, who, besides their racial continuity and by virtue of being successors to Prophet Jacob, have been regarded as his spiritual followers as well. These successors and spiritual leaders have most probably been missioned as prophets in Egypt and among the Israelites after Prophet Joseph and prior to Prophet Jacob.

following unanimity concerning the fact that al-qurbā in verse 23 of Sūrat al-Shūrā is meant to be the Prophet’s near of kin, there is disagreement between the Suunis and Shī‘as as to its referent. The Sunnis have brought up five possibilities but have already said that this verse had been revealed in the Meccan era and concerning the Quraysh polytheists, including those having some relation, even though far, to the Apostle of Allah. To prove this issue, they have adduced to the traditions of Ibn ‘Abbās and certain others, all of whom are weak in sanad (chain of transmission) and unarguable in content. The Shī‘as believe that this verse is reveled about the Ahl al-Bayt and to prove this we could refer to the sound traditions narrated by both the Sunni and Shī‘as as evidence. In addition to the narrations, one can also refer to some other verses in which the word qurbā is used as well as the narrations quoted in their interpretation, which can be applied to the Ahl al-Bayt. It is because the word qurbā enjoys the same meaning and referent in five instances in the Qur’an. Obviously, no precept in the Qur'an is without a rationale or unnecessary, the rationale for mawaddat can be creating relation for people to the Ahl al-Bayt as religious and scholarly authorities.