This Religion Is a Science 161and those revealed in Medina—thereby creating a loose chronology
that helped clarify their interpretation of the text.
However, for the neophyte, the organization of the Quran can be
baffling. The text that Uthman collected is divided into 114 chapters
called Surahs, each containing a different number of verses or ayahs.
With few exceptions, every Surah begins with the invocation of the
Basmallah: “In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.”
Perhaps to emphasize the Quran’s status as direct revelation, the
Surahs are arranged neither chronologically nor thematically, but
rather from the longest chapter to the shortest, the lone exception
being the first and most important chapter, Surah al-Fatiha: the
“Opening.”
There are two distinct methods of interpreting the Quran. The
first, tafsir, is primarily concerned with elucidating the literal meaning
of the text, while the second, ta’wil, is more concerned with the hid-
den, esoteric meaning of the Quran. Tafsir answers questions of con-
text and chronology, providing an easily understandable framework
for Muslims to live a righteous life. Ta’wil delves into the concealed
message of the text, which, because of its mystical nature, is compre-
hensible only to a select few. While both are considered equally valid
approaches, the tension between tafsir and ta’wil is but one of the
inevitable consequences of trying to interpret an eternal and uncre-
ated scripture that is nevertheless firmly grounded in a specific histor-
ical context.
For the Rationalists, who rejected the notion of an uncreated Quran,
the only reasonable method of exegesis was one that accounted for the
temporal nature of the Revelation. For this reason, the Rationalists
stressed the primacy of human reason in determining not just the
essence of the Quran, but also its meaning and, most importantly, its
historical context. To the Traditionalists, the eternal and uncreated
nature of the Quran made it pointless to talk of historical context or
original intent when interpreting it. The Quran has never changed
and will never change; neither should its interpretation.
As one can imagine, the Traditionalist position had a profound
influence on Quranic exegesis. First, it provided the orthodox Ulama
with sole authority to interpret what was now widely considered to be
a fixed and immutable text revealing the divine will of God. Second,