Rediscovering Maulana Hamiduddin Farahi and His Thought

Reviewed by: Abdur Raheem Kidwai – Aligarh Muslim University, India

Published by: New Delhi: Adam Publishers, 2023, 260pp. ISBN:978-8174358202.

Ḥamīduddīn Farāhī (1863-1930), an eminent Qur’ānic scholar of the early 20th century, placed premium on the concept of naẓm (coherence) in the Qur’ānic text in his incomplete Urdu tafsīr. His disciple, Amīn Aḥsan Iṣlāḥī (1904-1997), laboriously expanded this concept in his multivolume Urdu tafsīr, Tadabbur-i Qur’ān, at times, at the expense of overstretching the import of Qur’ānic verses. His objective in doing so was to try to indicate a thematic connection, no matter how tenuous it might be, between all the verses within a given sūrah as well as within all the sūrahs of the Qur’ān. It is worth reiterating that many Qur’ānic scholars in their Arabic, Persian and Urdu tafāsīr have been remarkably successful down the ages in accentuating the thematic links in the Qur’ānic text, even without resorting to the application of the intra- and inter- sūrah levels. Mustansir Mir’s Coherence in the Quran (1986) is perhaps the only work in English which expounds the Farāhī-Iṣlāḥī tafsīr approach. Mukarram Jahan’s work under review represents an earnest attempt to introduce the hallmarks of Farāhī as a distinct mufassir to English- speaking readers.