Qur’ānic imaginations in the making: New religious movements in Mughal‐era Islam

In the study of premodern Islam, is it possible to draw fruitfully upon the theories and methods that characterize the study of new religious movements? This article examines three approaches to the Qur’ān in the sixteenth‐century Mughal Empire: the Qur’ānic imitation of Bāyazīd Anṣārī, the lipogramatic exegesis of Fayżī, and the moral commentary of Badā’ūnī. These works reveal the innovation, contingency, and “newness” of Islamic Qur’ānic traditions in the Mughal domain. Though they disagreed vehemently, Bāyazīd, Fayżī, and Badā’ūnī all approached the Qur’ān as a revelation that is emergent and ongoing rather than fixed in the historical past. This article argues that the study of premodern Mughal religion – and the history of Islam more generally – benefits from heuristically understanding Islamic texts as part of ever‐emergent “new religious movements” rather than as examples of a single transhistorical religion.