Content area
Full Text
Mun'im A. Sirry: The Qur'an with Cross-References ix, 683 pp. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2022. ISBN 978 3 11077915 8.
Reference works on the Quran have proliferated recently, a reflection of the seriousness with which academia views the field of Quranic studies. These reference works are invariably produced by single authors, but it is not clear what merit many of them have when they are produced hastily and claim universal coverage of the Quran. They run the danger of being either premature (such works are usually the culmination of a life of engagement with a particular text), or worse redundant since they do not improve on older reference works. We are at an interesting moment in Quranic studies when individual scholars are trying to replicate reference works produced for the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, reference works that are the result of collaborative work by a multitude of scholars. There are neither the resources nor the quantity of scholars in Quranic studies to publish something like the Anchor Bible Commentary. We are yet to see in Quranic studies anything like the guides produced for the books of the New Testament (e.g. the T & T Clark series). Nevertheless, the lacuna in reference works on the Quran is not a manufactured problem, and the effort of these individual scholars is to be commended.
Mun'im Sirry's book promises to emulate works on the Bible guided by internal Islamic hermeneutical developments in the twentieth century. It is the result of ten years of meticulous toil, and adds a new tool for the those interested in the Quran, presenting both Arabic and English text. Each verse is first cited in Arabic with, below, an English translation. At the right margin there are references to other verses. The author states that the Quran has, “to date, never been cross-referenced” (p. 1). In a footnote Sirry refers to the tradition of cross-referencing the Bible since early modern times. This is indeed the first printed Arabic Quran with verse-by-verse English translation and cross-references. The “User's guide” explains the methodology behind the author's work. He states that “for almost every verse in the Qur'an, a selection of other passages...