Intertextuality in Commentary of “One Hundred regents” by Shaykh Yuyo

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine intertextuality in manuscript commentary of a classical work, namely One Hundred Regents, of a well-known author ‘Abd al-Qāhir ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥmān alĞurğānī. The objective of the article is to apply post-structural theories of reading texts that rely on concept which propose to see every text as endless relations with myriad of texts. The citationality as most marked phenomenon of explicit intertextuality and foremost characteristic of the commentary will be widely explored. The paper will question and problematize the view that the Oriental-Islamic culture is a culture in which dominate illuminative citationality and reveal the features that define this culture as culture of diachronic and synchronic permeation of illuminative and illustrative types of citationality. Intertextual references, dialogue between metatext and prototext and relationships that exists between this work and previous Arabic grammatical and non-grammatical works, particularly the Qur’an, allow us to establish a hierarchy of authorities and values in the Oriental-Islamic culture. In this regard, particular attention is given to the role of the author of the commentary, Shaykh Yuyo, in order to redefine the classical notion of author and to investigate whether his originality was compromised by frequent quoting.