TAFILALT — TAFSIR Filah Ruling House (Ca. 1050/1640); and The
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TAFILALT — TAFSIR 83 Filah ruling house (ca. 1050/1640); and the ruinous controversies of the Basra Mu'tazih cosmology, and site of Sidjilmasa, whose kasha was finally destroyed which is attributed in particular to Ibrahim b. Sayyar by the Ayt Atta in 1818. al-Nazzam (and also to Hisham b. al-Hakam). Al- Bibliography: See those to CALAWIS and SIDJIL- Nazzam [q.v.] is taken to have argued that it is pos- MASA, and also P. Ricard, revised Ch. Bacquet, Guide sible to move over a distance without going through Bleue. Maroc, 8th ed. Paris 1954, 424-31 and map all the parts of the distance, by leaping over those at p. 416. (E. LEVI-PROVEN^AL*) parts. Although this theory came in for a lot of crit- TAFKHIM (A.), the verbal noun from fakhkhama icism by those sympathetic to atomism, al-Nazzam was meaning "to make thick, to emphasise or to make successful in pointing to difficulties in the minimal grand". In Arabic, it is a phonetic phenomenon involv- parts discrete geometry of the atomists. This is a ver- ing the pronunciation of the emphatic consonants, sion of the paradoxes which Zeno first discussed in mufakhkhama (sing, mufakhkham], /t 1>, d jo, s ^, 9 J?/and connection with the existence of indivisible magni- also includes the marginal emphatics /r, I/. Kur'anic tudes. The paradox of the flying arrow is that every orthoepists used the term tafkhim to describe certain thing which is moving is really resting at each stage variants of /r/ when it occurs next to low and back of the movement. The movement itself is hidden in vowels; however, they designated the term taghliz, the substance and only appears when the substance thickening, which they used synonymously with tajkhim, itself is moving. Hisham al-Fuwatf (fl. early 3rd/9th for the description of certain variants of /!/. The /}/, century) is said to have abandoned the theory of leaps as an emphatic variant, has a limited environment once he realised that, if it is valid, then a creature and is primarily used with the word Allah when not which had dipped its legs in ink would produce a preceded by /i, I/. discontinuous rather than a continuous track when it The earliest occurrence of the term tajkhim was covered a particular distance (see Ibn Mattawayh, 169). when Sfbawayhi used it to describe what he called This sort of example played a large part in contem- alif al-taJkJnm and he considered it as a variant, not porary disputes over the plausibility of atomism and a phoneme. According to him, alif al-tajkhim is found its alternatives as a theory of the nature of physical in a limited number of words such as saldt, prayers; reality. zakdt, the giving of alms to the poor; and hay at, life, Bibliography: Ashcarf, Makdldt al-Isldmiyyin, especially in the dialect of Hidjaz (al-Kitdb, iv, 432). Istanbul 1929-30, 61, 321; Baghdad!, Park, 113; The four primary emphatic consonants /s, d, t 5 / Shahrastam, 38-39; Ibn Hazm, Fisal, Cairo 1899, are not referred to by Slbawayhi as mufakhkhama but 64, 92; Isfara'im, Tabsir, Cairo 1955, 68; H. Daiber, as mutbaka (sing, mutbak), a tradition followed by Arab Das theologisch-philosophische System des Mucammar ibn grammarians and Kur'anic orthoepists. The verbal cAbbdd as-Sulami, Beirut 1975, 300-2; Ibn Mattawayh, noun itbdk "act of covering or putting on a lid", is used Tadhkira fl ahkdm al-ajawdhir wa 'l-a'rdd, ed. S. Lutf to describe the position of the tongue in the pronun- and F. cAwn, Cairo 1975; H. Wolfson, The philoso- ciation of the mutbaka. The mutbaka, along with the phy of the Kalam, Cambridge, Mass. 1976, 514-7; velar/uvular group /x £, y £, q j/, are referred to by J. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschajt im 2. und 3. the generic term mustacliya, high or raised. The mustacliya Jahrhundert Hidschra, Berlin and New York 1991-7, consonants are described as preventing the occurrence iii, 310-24, and index s.v. t-f-r at iv, 1001; of imdla [q.v.], "inclination" of /a/ towards /i/. A. Dhanani, The physical theory of kaldm. Atoms, space Contemporary Arabists and linguists use the term and void in Basrian Mu'tazili cosmology, Leiden 1994, tafkhim to describe the emphatic consonants, mufakh- 176-8L (O.N.H. LEAMAN) khama., /t, d, s, 5 / and the marginal emphatics /r TAFSIR (A.), pi. tafdsir "interpretation" (as a and I/. Tafkhim is often characterised by pharyngeal- process and a literary genre), generally, but not always, isation or velarisation, but the mufakhkhama consonants of the Kur'an. The word is used for commentaries are best characterised by the phonetic feature of re- on Greek scientific and philosophical works, being traction which involves moving the tongue up and equivalent to shark [q.v.]; the term is applied to the further back toward the velum and upper pharynx. Greek and Arabic commentaries on the works of Tafkhim is not restricted to the environment of the Aristotle, for example. Jews and Christians writing in emphatics, but rather spreads to any adjacent vowel Arabic also use the word in the context of transla- or consonant making it emphatic. It is this feature of tions and commentaries on the Bible, as some of the retraction that makes this group of consonants opaque works of Saadia Gaon demonstrate. The most signifi- [see SAWTIYYA]. cant usage of the word, however, and the focus of Bibliography: For related articles on tafkhim in this article, is its reference to the branch of Islamic El2, See IMALA, MAKHARIDJ AL-HURUF and SAWTIYYA. learning concerned with the Kur'an. An essential part Also Salman H. Al-Ani, and Moharned S. El-Dalee, of madrasa training, the study of tafdsir of the Kur'an Tajkhlm in Arabic. The acoustic and physiological para- stands alongside the study of hadith and fikh as ele- meter, in M.P:R. Van den Broecke and A. Cohen ments of the traditional curriculum. (eds.), Proceedings of the Xth International Congress of The emergence of the word tafsir as a technical Phonetic Sciences, Utrecht 1984, 385-9; Ibn Djinm, term is unclear. It is used once in the Kur'an at Sin sindcat al-i'rab, Damascus 1985, i, 45-67; Ibn XXV, 33, "They [the unbelievers] bring not to thee al-Djazarf, al-Nashr fi 'l-kird'dt al-cashr, Cairo n.d., [Muhammad] any similitude [mathal] but that We i, 210-4, ii, 90-119. R. Jakobson, Mufaxxama. The bring thee the truth and the best tafsir". This follows "emphatic" phonemes in Arabic, in Studies presented to on a verse which states, "The unbelievers say, 'Why has Joshua Whatmough, ed. E. Pulgram, The Hague 1957, the Kur'an not been sent down all at once?' Even so, 105-15; Sfbawayhi, al-Kitab, ed. cAbd al-Salam that We may strengthen thy heart thereby, and We Muhammad Harun, Beirut 1975, iv. have chanted it very distinctly". The idea would appear (SALMAN H. AL-ANI) to be that God has provided an explanation, tafsir, TAFRA (A.), lit., "leap or impulsive movement", of why the Kur'an is being revealed piece-by-piece. from tafara "to jump, leap", a term of Islamic Of course, other technical terms in Muslim religious philosophy, which became an important part of thinking frequently have no special status within the anti-atomistic theories brought into play during the Kur'an, so the lack of a firm reference point for the 84 TAFSIR term tqfsir is not particularly surprising (see J. Wans- characterise the wide variety of books and approaches brough, Quranic studies. Sources and methods of scriptural which are contained within the broadly-defined genre interpretation, Oxford 1977, 154-8). For the first three of tafsir, since it concentrates on a superficial under- Islamic centuries, there appears to be no consistent standing of the form of the works with little atten- differentiation between tafsir, ta3wil [q.v] and ma'nd tion to their underlying substance. [q.v., section 1] when used in titles of books or as a Recent scholarly attempts to define the genre have technical term within works of tqfsir (and, indeed, this concentrated on isolating the variety of elements which is the attitude of the lexicographers: see Lane, i, 2397; come together within a given text in varying pro- for the ambiguities of the differentiation between the portions (see N. Calder, Tafsir from Tabari to Ibn Kathir: terms in early times, see N. Kinberg, A lexicon of al- problems in the description of a genre, illustrated with reference Farrd3}s terminology in his Qur3dn commentary, Leiden 1996, to the story of Abraham, in G.R. Hawting and A.-K.A. 40-2, 503-27, 563-6). After some time, tafsir was dis- Shareef (eds.), Approaches to the Qur3dn, London 1993, tinguished from ta'wll by the latter being considered 101 -40; P. Heath, Creative hermeneutics: a comparative analy- the product of research and investigation, the former sis of three Islamic approaches, in Arabica, xxxvi [1989], dependent upon transmission from Muhammad and 173-210). Different mufassirun have different concerns his companions. In its developed sense, ta'wil became and goals, and this is reflected in the relative weight limited to interpretation which leaves the "obvious" they put upon elements such as history, grammar, (gahir) sense and delves into more speculative levels semantics, law, theology, or folklore. All commenta- of language (bdtin). Ma'nd, on the other hand, became tors are concerned with the process of analysing the more constrained and limited primarily to lexico- text in light of the "external world", however that be graphical aspects of interpretation.