Sayyid Aḥmad Khān (1817-1898) was a prominent religious reformer and educationist in pre-partition India. One of his least understood works is Tabyīn al-kalām fī tafsīr al-taurāt wa ‘i-injīl ‘alā millat al-Islām (The Elucidation of the Word in Commentary of the Torah and Gospel According to the Religion of Islam), or as the author simply termed it: ‘The Mohomedan Commentary on the Holy Bible’ (1860-1865). In this dissertation I examine Tabyīn along with other principle works in the original Urdu to enquire: how did Sayyid Aḥmad conceptualize revelation in the Bible? I argue that he employed a systematic paradigm to categorize all prophetic revelation, the identification of which opens the way for a clearer understanding of our author’s attitude towards the Bible. In this light, Tabyīn emerges as a prototypical example intended to demonstrate that prophetic texts share greater consonance than dissonance if universal principles are applied to regulate interpretation. Sayyid Aḥmad’s view of the coherence of all revelation, natural and prophetic, allowed for a reverent but critical juxtaposition of the Bible with Islam’s primary textual sources as initiated in Tabyīn, and continued in his final exegetical work, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:649300 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Ramsey, Charles Magee |
| Publisher | University of Birmingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/5914/ |
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