THE METHODOLOGY OF MUNASABAH IN ULUM AL-QURʾAN: RECONSTRUCTING AN APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING QUR’ANIC THEMATIC COHERENCE

Abstract

The Qurʾan has long been read as a text composed of discrete, self-standing units, an assumption that inadvertently obscures the intricate web of thematic and structural relations binding its verses and chapters into a coherent whole. This study addresses that gap by reconstructing munāsabah, the classical discipline of Qurʾanic coherence, as a systematic and replicable methodology rather than an intuitive exegetical ornament. Employing a library-based Research and Development (R&D) design adapted from the Analysis–Design–Development–Implementation–Evaluation (ADDIE) model, the study analyses sixty-seven primary and secondary sources spanning classical treatises, modern naẓm theory, and contemporary empirical studies on munāsabah. The reconstruction yields a four-layer analytical model comprising lexical-syntactic, rhetorical-stylistic, thematic-conceptual, and structural-architectonic correlation, validated through triangulated application to a purposively sampled corpus of six sūrahs and two sūrah pairings. Findings indicate that munāsabah functions most robustly not as a supplementary tool of tafsīr but as an independent hermeneutical apparatus capable of demonstrating the Qurʾan's internal unity at the levels of verse, passage, sūrah, and canon, and that correlational claims are most defensible when corroborated across at least two of the four layers. The study further identifies methodological convergences between classical munāsabah and modern discourse-coherence theory, particularly the frameworks advanced by al-Farāhī, Amīn Aḥsan Iṣlāḥī, al-Biqāʿī, and Salwā El-Awa. The reconstructed model offers exegetes, students of ʿulūm al-Qurʾan, and computational Qurʾanic-studies researchers a transferable protocol for coherence analysis, with implications for thematic tafsīr (tafsīr mawḍūʿī), Islamic religious pedagogy, and digital text-analytics of the Qurʾanic corpus.