Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

180 • The Making of Islamic Sciencefrom the number of editions of this work that appeared between 1927and 1950.The scientific exegesis of the QurāĀn reached a high point in1931, when a twenty-six-volume tafsir was published by TantawiJawhari (1870–1940). His tafsir, called al-Jawahir fi Tafsir al-QurāĀnal-Karim (Pearls from the Tafsir of the Noble QurāĀn), appeared withillustrations, drawings, photographs, and tables. In his introductionto the work, Tantawi says that he prayed to God to enable him tointerpret the QurāĀn in a manner that would include all sciencesattained by humans so that Muslims could understand the cosmicsciences. He firmly believed QurāĀnic chapters complemented whatwas being discovered by modern science.In the due course of time scientific exegesis made its way intothe main body of tafsir literature, as many religious scholars beganto comment on science in relation to the QurāĀnic verses. At times,a writer would divide his commentary into several parts, such asexplanation of words, linguistic exegesis, and scientific interpretation.A work of this kind is Farid Wajdi’s al-Mushaf al-Mufassar (The QurāĀnInterpreted), published in Cairo without a date on the printed edition.In his “remarks on verses,” Wajdi often inserts scientific explanationswith exclamations placed in parentheses: “you read in this verse anunambiguous prediction of things invented in the nineteenth andthe twentieth centuries”; or “modern science confirms this literally”(Wajdi n.d., 346, 423). Wajdi’s commentary is not exclusively devotedto scientific explanations of the QurāĀn, but many other worksare. Even the titles of these works are suggestive of the importancegranted to the nexus between science and the QurāĀn by the writers.Such works include Mujizat al-QurāĀn fi Wasf al-Kainat (The Miraclesof the QurāĀn in the Cosmos) by Hanafi Ahmad (1954), later reprinted(1960) as al-Tafsir al-Ilmi fi Âyât al-Kawniyya (The Scientific Exegesisof the Cosmic Verses); al-Islam wa tibb al-Haditha (Islam and ModernMedicine) by Ismail Abd al-Aziz; al-Nazariyya al-Ilmiyya fi’l-QurāĀn(Scientific Theories in the QurāĀn) by Matb al-Itimad (1942); Creation ofthe Heavens and the Earth in Six Days in Science and in the QurāĀn byHasan Atiyyah (1992); and many others.What is common in all such works is the zeal to show the existenceof modern science in the QurāĀn. This zeal is coupled with a desire to