The Interpretation of “It is they who are the successful ones” (al-Baqara 2:5) in al-Zamakhsharī’s al-Kashshāf and the Metacommentary Tradition

This paper presents an example of al-Zamakhsharī’s interpretation of the use of the definite article in al-Baqara 2:5, “It is they who are the successful ones” (wa ulāʾika hum al-mufliḥūn) to show how communicative ideas from outside the discipline of tafsīr, taken from ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī and the field of rhetoric, came to inflect approaches to the Qurʾān at the granular level. This paper further shows how the intellectual debt of tafsīr to rhetoric can be traced by recourse to the ḥāshiya (metacommentary) tradition on al-Zamakhsharī’s al-Kashshāf and al-Bayḍāwī’s Anwār. Controversies that persisted throughout the post-classical period related to the interpretation of language and this verse, this paper concludes, had less to do with scholasticism and was instead reflective of underlying commitments to a communicative approach to language that had been derived from the field of rhetoric, which had motivated the interpretation of this verse in the first place.