Books and Written Culture of the Islamic World Studies Presented to Claude Gilliot on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday By Andrew Rippin and Roberto Tottoli, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2015. 398 pages.)

Abstract

Claude Gilliot (b. 1940) stands at the forefront of Qur’anic and especially
tafsīr studies in today’s western academic world. His expertise extends also
into other Islamic fields, notably theology, and his well-known encyclopedic
learning and bibliographic erudition are as striking as the depth and breadth
of his scholarly corpus and the sharp wit that all who know him have come to
expect in their encounters with him. The book under review is a fitting tribute
from twenty colleagues, nine writing in English, eight in French, and three in
German across several fields of Islamic studies.
The book’s first section (pp. 3-130), “Authors,” consists of seven contributions,
each of which treats one Muslim or European non-Muslim author or
text, four of which pertain to Qur’anic studies and three to other areas. Three
of the four Qur’anic contributions discuss different interpretive approaches
through elucidation of exemplary texts. Pierre Larcher offers a close analysis
of four Qur’anic phrases or sentences that pose particular problems of textual
variants or readings as they are treated by al-Farra’ (d. 822) in his Ma‘ānī al-
Qur’ān. Andrew Rippin gives a trenchant discussion of polysemy as a ...