Relationship between tafsir and social life (The example of Tafsīr al-Qurtubī and Tafsīr al-Manār)

One of the most important features of the Holy Qur'an is the principles it sets forth for social life. In this environment where globalisation is trying to uniformise the whole world and civilisations are dying one by one, these principles put forward by the Qur'an constitute the basis for the Islamic Civilisation to survive and become an alternative for humanity. These measures and principles set forth by the Qur'an have been the subject of exegesis by Muslim commentators. In both classical and modern tafsirs, the interpretations that will affect social life have constituted an important part of the tafsirs. In this study, we have examined the treatment of the verses that concern social life and social order in classical and modern exegesis by two exegetes. We compared the important name of the Andalusian exegesis tradition, Qurtubi, and the Menâr exegesis of Abduh-Rızâ, the controversial name of modern times. In this way, we tried to analyse the similar and different aspects of contemporary Islamic thought and traditional exegesis. Our study consists of an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion. In the first part, we discussed the lives of the commentators and the geographies they lived in and the key concepts, in the second part, family and education, in the third part, economics and politics, and in the fourth part, issues related to social life such as law and social morality. In the conclusion, we discussed the conclusions reached. Key Words: Tafsīr, Social Life, Qurtubī, Abduh-Rızâ, Menār