Book Review: Nicolai Sinai: Key Terms of the Qurʾān: A Second Critique
In a previous review of Key Terms of the Qurʾān: A Critical Dictionary, it was noted that the work might have become a major contribution to Qurʾānic studies had its content fulfilled the promise of its title. The dictionary was announced as “a historically oriented dictionary of key Qur’anic terms and phrases,” yet much of it devolves into old and tiring discussions of pre-Qurʾānic precedents and Biblical parallels through Sinai’s inconsistent engagement with the classical Arabic lexicons, whose treatment of Qurʾānic roots forms the bedrock of premodern semantic analysis. While Key Terms of the Qur’an gestures toward semantic history and occasionally cites lexicographical authorities such as al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad (d. 175/791) or Ibn Fāris (d. 395/1004), these references remain selective and largely subordinated to a self-constructed ah hoc framework of modern historical linguistics. There is little sustained engagement with the semantic principles operative in works like Maʿānī al-Qurʾān, Kitāb al-ʿAyn, or even Mufradāt alfāẓ al-Qurʾān, despite the fact that these works—often acknowledged as foundational in Qurʾānic contextualization—represent the earliest and most conceptually proximate efforts to articulate Qurʾānic meanings of the Arabic terms.
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Muzaffar Iqbal |
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