An Anthology of Avicennan Hermeneutics

Although the name “Ibn Sīnā” does not usually bring the term “exegete” immediately to mind, the great philosopher nonetheless left a handful of opuscules interpreting different verses, even entire chapters, of the Quran. This anthology presents translations of four such works: his exegeses on two verses from Sūrat Fuṣṣilat, and the entirety of Sūrat al-Aʿlā, Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ, and al-Muʿawwidhatayn. Consistently philosophical in language and method, these works incorporate the metaphysical, ethical, cosmological, and logical productions of the Peripatetic-Avicennan tradition within the language of the Quran itself, amounting to an allegorical interpretation of the Quran that is as certain its methods as it is striking in its coherency.