History of ‘ilm al-munāsabāt as Depicted in the “Burhān” by Badr ad-Dīn az-Zarkashī (d. 1392)

Abstract

The article deals with the historical overview of the emergence of the interest to the composition of the Qur’ān and the formation of the special discipline in the classical Muslim science written by an authority in the subject, Badr ad-Dīn az-Zarkashī. Zarkashī dates the beginning of this interest back to the first half of the Xth century but it is only in the XIII–XIVth centuries that we can speak of the existence of the discipline devoted to munāsabāt. Zarkashī’s text became a starting point for Jalāl ad-Dīn as-Suyūṭī in his famous Itqān. The article includes also a survey of the concrete approaches of Muslim scholars to the study of the structure of the Qur’ānic text.