The text of the Qur ʾān is ambiguous anddifficult to access, whether one's mother tongueis Arabic or not. This fact holds true even forthe first generations of Muslims in the1st/7th century. This is whyit was necessary for the believers right from thestart to interpret the holy scripture of Islam.While the first form of qur ʾānic exegesis can befound in the Qurʾān itself,1 only very little oflater exegesis can be traced back to Muḥammad, thefounder of Islam. Over the centuries qur ʾānicexegesis remained an important discipline andnumerous works dealing with it have been composed.Until today qur ʾānic exegesis is being practicedby Muslim scholars and intellectuals. But what dowe know about the teaching of this popular subjectduring the classical period of Islam?

Both in the study of qur ʾānic exegesis and inthat of the history of Islamic sciences andscholarship some progress has been made in recentyears. Although there are some publications thatcombine the two topics dealing with the role ofthe Qur ʾān and qurʾānic exegesis within Islamiceducation, these works are concerned withmodernity and most of them have strong territoriallimitations. For the formative and classicalperiod of Islam such research is still lacking.The didactic activities of early exegetes as anessential part of the curriculum of qurʾānicschools and religious teaching institutions havereceived little attention so far. Even though thefield of qur ʾānic exegesis has always ranked highwithin Islamic scholarship, few details are knownabout its teaching. This is the point from where anew research project could start. The objective ofsuch an undertaking is to draw a picture, asdetailed as possible, of how schooling andinstruction in the field of qurʾānic exegesis tookplace in the first three centuries after Islamemerged. Such fundamental questions as thefollowing could for instance be dealt with: Whatsources did the exegetes use while compiling theirextensive works? To what extent did the individualexegetes influence each other? What influence dideducational needs have on the writing of thecommentaries? What were the contexts in which theQur ʾān and its exegesis were taught? Who attendedclasses on qur ʾānic exegesis?