Quranic exegesis predated European Orientalism by over a millennium
Evidence
But readers of Ibn Warraq should actually be told that every single letter—every consonant and every vowel—of the Quran has been the subject of libraries and then more libraries of the most meticulous exegetical and hermeneutic scrutiny for more than 1400 years, beginning centuries before the predatory European colonialism manufactured its intelligence arm and called it Orientalism. More than 500 years before Christopher Columbus stumbled on this continent and commenced the genocide of its native inhabitants, Abu Ja’far Muhammad Ibn Jarir al-Tabari (839-923 CE) composed his ]ami’ al-Bayan fi Tafsir al-Qur’an (A Complete Compendium on the Interpretation of the Quran); by then the vast body of Quranic exegesis in Arabic was already so massive that al-Tabari had to sift through libraries of commentary to provide a succinct summary of various linguistic, juridical, theological, and philosophical interpretations. Since al-Tabari, they have only multiplied. It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that Orientalism began delivering its mercenary services to colonialism in earnest. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 522
But readers of Ibn Warraq should actually be told that every single letter—every consonant and every vowel—of the Quran has been the subject of libraries and then more libraries of the most meticulous exegetical and hermeneutic scrutiny for more than 1400 years, beginning centuries before the predatory European colonialism manufactured its intelligence arm and called it Orientalism. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 522
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to postcolonial criticism of Orientalism as a colonial knowledge apparatus, echoing Said’s Orientalism.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 522