Journal of Sakarya University Faculty of Theology

Abstract

Abu „Ubaydah Ma„mar Ibn al-Muthanna is one of the most important early Arabic phi-lologists and scholars of the culture and history of the pre-Islamic Arabs. He is as well a multifaceted scholar who has contributed tremendously to Islamic culture and sciences in the second century of Islamic period. He has left of a legacy of around 200 books written in various subjects. His writings on various religious denominations and sects, such as Kharijites and Shias, and on various ethnic groups such as Persians and Arabs shed significant lights on religious, ethnic and cultural multiplicity and richness of his surroundings. One of his significant works that survived in our time is his book of Majaz al-Qur‟an, on difficult and idiomatic expressions in the Qur‟an, with an important introduction on Quranic stylistics. The book has been used as reference book for later works in exegesis and language studies. In this study, we will study and analyze Ebu „Ubaydah‟s capacity of scholarship as an exegete within the context of his only philological commentary of Majaz al-Qur‟an.