Lecturer will explore various interpretations of the Qur’an

Professor Walid Saleh of the University of Toronto’s Department of Religious Studies will initiate the lecture series with two lectures on Sept. 19 and 20, at the Noor Cultural Centre and at York University. In the lectures, titled “The Qur’an and its Interpretations: Some Basic Questions” and “Macci Madani: Reexamination of the Redactional Analysis of the Qur’an”, Saleh will examine the different interpretations and the written analysis of the Qur’an.

Saleh was born in Colombia to immigrant Lebanese parents, who soon returned the family to the Middle East so the children would learn Arabic. Saleh grew up in Lebanon during the 1970s and 80s and earned his undergraduate degree at the American University of Beirut in Arabic literature and language. His interest in these two topics still animates his research, and he is a close follower of modern Arabic poetry. He did his doctorate at Yale University in Islamic studies, where he examined the Qur’an and its exegesis in medieval Islamic civilization. He is the author of The Formation of the Classical Tafsir Tradition; The Qur’an Commentary of Al-thalabi (D.427/1035) (Brill Academic Pub., 2003).

He now teaches at the University of Toronto in the Centre and Department for Religious Studies. Saleh’s primary teaching responsibilities cover the Qur’an, including its history, redaction and manuscripts; the history of the reception of the Qur’an, exegesis and the piety it inspired; the intellectual history of classical Islam; and the apocalyptic literature of Islamic civilization written in Arabic.