Proposal for the unit “The Societal Qur’an” The central conceptual theme pursued in this paper relates to the intersection and interaction of textual traditions such as Qur’an commentaries, ritual performances like oral sermons, and the articulation and formation of religious identity in medieval Islam. I explore this theme through a careful reading of the first Persian Qur’an commentary in the Imami Shi‘i tradition, that of the renowned twelfth century scholar, Abul Futuh al-Razi (d.1144CE) titled The Cool Breeze of Paradise and Breath for the Soul (Rawd al-Jinan wa Ruh al-Jinan fi tafsir al-Qur’an) , and composed during the reign of the Seljuq dynasty (roughly between 1050-1225CE). While focusing on Razi’s Qur’an commentary, I explore and highlight some of the ways in which discursive practices like the composition and oral performance of Qur’an commentaries anticipated and generated particular forms of pre-modern publics. More specifically, I will try to highlight ways in which the employment of narrative techniques as part of exegetical performances helped curate particular understandings and imaginaries of the public in this moment. The dramatic literary style, informal Persian idiom, and colorful narrative and poetic content of the tafsir, I argue, are telling signs of the kinds of listeners that the tafsir both addressed and sought to cultivate. The main contribution of this paper lies therefore in elevating our understanding of the mutually reinforcing dynamic between text and ritual in the curation of premodern Muslim publics. Namely, through a close reading of Razi’s exegesis I show the interaction of Qur’an exegesis, Shi’i rituals of remembrance, and the cultivation of distinct sensorial reactions and capacities - an important medium for the narration, transmission, and indeed determination of religious identities. I argue that al-Razi’s Qur’an commentary represents a crucial site for tracking the emergence of a distinct public since it conjoins Qur’anic hermeneutics as an exercise in textual interpretation and oral ritual telling. This commentary thus captures the relocation of the Qur’an from Arabic to Persian on the one hand, and from written text to public oral sermon on the other. Further, it marks the movement of the “place of exegesis,” from madrasa or the Islamic seminary to the mosque, from the scholar’s podium to the preacher’s pulpit.