First book to study tafsir as a genre published

Source: OUP website.

Tafsīr and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre (ISBN 978-0-19-870206-1), is part of the Oxford University Press' Qur'anic Studies Series. The volume offers the only up-to-date survey of scholarship on tafsīr as a genre and its place within the broader framework of Muslim scholarship.

The 400-page hardback, launched in January 2015, represents the first attempt at analysing the fields in which Muslim exegetical activity takes place, its relation to other fields of learning and the conditions that influence the results of exegesis. The £55 book discusses the emergence of the genre in the beginnings of Islamic history and the changes and potential ruptures it has experienced in later times, the role of hadith, law, language, philosophy, theology and political ideology for the interpretive process, the regional dimension, the influx of modernist ideas and the process of writing tafsīr in languages other than Arabic.

Questions answered include: 

• How and when did Qur'anic exegesis (tafsīr) emerge as a literary genre of its own? 
• To what extent was it influenced by other disciplines, such as law, theology or philosophy
• How did different political or theological agendas shape works of tafsīr, and in what ways did the genre develop over time and in different regions?

Edited by Andreas Görke, Lecturer in Islamic Studies, University of Edinburgh, and Johanna Pink, Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Freiburg, the book consists of essays from 15 contributors who are leading scholars in the field or young researchers, providing a mix of perspectives.