Dini Araştırmalar (Religious Studies)

Abstract

Efforts to understand the Quran has continued uninterrupted since its revelation

period and the interpretation activity has been carried out using certain methods until

today. There are three different approaches to the interpretation of the Qur’an. Firstly,

commentaries that are written according to the composition of Companion Osman’s

mushaf; secondly, commentaries that are based on a subject that do not take this into

account; the third one is the interpretation made by organizing the verses according to

the time of revelation. Identifying the order of revelation and making the interpretation

in accordance with this order is also used as a method. For this purpose, researchers have benefited from knowledge of asbab al-nuzul and Meccan-medinan verses. On the

other hand, the thought that the verses cannot be identifi ed according to chronological

order, has led the researchers to classify the verses according to specifi c periods and

make comments based on the events of that period. These studies sometimes have

encompassed the whole peroid and sometimes in-depth studies conducted on the time

period of certain ranges.

This article discusses the work of four recent researchers who classifi ed Qur’an

surahs according to time periods. These studies have classifi ed surahs according to

narrations about their time of revelation and the style and content of the surahs. They

also associated the surahs with the events that took place in this period. Additionally

this article focuses on the methods used and the results obtained in these relevant

works and questions the possibility of achieving common results in such kind classifi -

cations that are based on ijtihad. However, due to the impossibility of a time classifi -

cation of surahs that is accepted by everyone, this paper also shows the impossibility

of reaching a common conclusion in the studies on periodic classifi cation of surahs.