What does a vibrant, creative and engaging academic space look and feel like? Where scholarly driven inquiry and research drives a curriculum that is tweaked every year based on developments in the field, student’s research interests, and engagement with traditional texts that are re-presented in the context of the time and place we live in.
Mawlana Kamil, faculty chair of the Department of Qurʾānic Exegesis, brings into focus what this looks like in practice, through his research activities with students who show the aptitude and interest in the advanced study of tafsir. He likens the work and training that goes on within the department to “catching lightning in a bottle.”
Today’s tour takes us into the realm of extracurricular activities, as we observe the Tafsir Projects Group’s taḥqīqat (scholarly edit) of a passage from Mullā Jīwan’s al-Tafsīrāt al-Aḥmadiyyah. The group meets Saturday’s after Fajr via Zoom. Excitement abounds as Mawlana Kamil has obtained digitized copies of manuscripts of Mullā Jīwan’s work from Dr. Abu Sad Islahi, Librarian at the Raza Library in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, India.
Read Mawlana Kamil’s publication on the methodology of Mullā Jīwan’s al-Tafsīrāt al-Aḥmadiyya.