Nazm al-Qur’an and Methodological Pattern of Ibn ‘Ashur: An Evaluation

Abstract

Rhetoricians and exegetes have both paid attention to Nazm al-Qur'an with heightened interests. Unfortunately, not many mufassirun managed to unfold the message of the Qur'an from the angle of Nazm al-Qur'an. Only few scholars applied the concept of Nazm al-Qur’an in their interpretation of the Qur'an. Al-RazT, al-Haralliyy. al-Biqa'I, alFarahi. Ibn 'Ashur, Syed Mawdudi, Syed Qutb, and IslahT may be counted among those who furthered the cause of Nazm al-Qur'an. Methodology of these well-known mufassirun does not represent the same pattern. The main task of these scholars has been to identify the coherence among all the components of a surah hence thematic unity in the surah. But they have been somewhat different from one another as to the way to identify the coherence. Muhammad al-Tahir ibn 'Ashur has developed his own methodology to do justice with his assignment of identifying the thematic units' in the Qur'an. In this paper an attempt will be made to identify Ibn 'Ashur's novel methodological pattern in his Tafsir work, which he applied to establish the position of Nazm al-Qur'an