Marife Dini Araştırmalar Dergisi

Öz

One of the discussion issues related to the Qur'an exegesis is whether one is allowed to interpret the Qur'an according to his personal opinion (ra’y). Some hadiths of the Prophet (pbuh) made the scholars in the early days of Islam hesitate in interpreting the Qur'an. Nevertheless these scholars have believed that the activities of Quranic exegesis should be carried out in a legitimate way and that this this is inevitable for them. They have therefore set forward some stipulations to interpret the Qur’an from the days when the science of Exegesis began systematically. Among those stipulations, the undoubtedly most important is, that the one who wants to interpret the Qur’an should be equipped with some certain disciplines which form at the same time the frame of legitimacy of the product of that exegetical procedure. Accordingly, while the Quranic exegetes (mufassirun) of relatively earlier periods, like al-Tabari, used those disciplines actively, the others like Kadi Abdaljabbar, Raghib al-Isfahani, Abu Hayyan al-Andalusi theoretically set them forth, dealing with each one separately. It is noteworthy that both in the classical and modern ages, those disciplines might vary according to the interpreters. It may be said that, in forming these variations, the scientific circumstances of each ages are effective. Another point to notice is that while, in the classical ages these scientific circumstances were related to the inner dynamics of the Islamic disciplines, in the modern era the social and political factors began to play important roles